TY - JOUR T1 - Narrowing the health inequality gap by annual health checks for patients with intellectual disability JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 101 LP - 102 DO - 10.3399/bjgp14X677293 VL - 64 IS - 619 AU - Dominic Slowie AU - Graham Martin Y1 - 2014/02/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/64/619/101.abstract N2 - Premature mortality in people with intellectual disability (ID; also referred to as learning disability) is significant and to some extent, avoidable. In the 2013 report Confidential Inquiry into Premature Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities people with ID tended to die from causes potentially amenable to change by improvement of quality of health care: ‘All aspects of care provision, planning, coordination and documentation were significantly less good… than for comparators.’1A recent article in the BJGP addresses acute care in this group of vulnerable patients.2 This article addresses how primary care teams may improve maintenance care to reduce the health inequality gap that these patients may experience.Over the past decade, GP practices have taken on increasing responsibilities for the care of people with ID. Two principal reasons are the closure of long-stay ID institutions and relocation of their patients to the community. Many patients are now settled in residential care homes and others in supervised tenancies. Also, with recent medical technological advances more people with intellectual disabilities are living longer. This means the total prevalence for ID in the general population, including those with mild ID is 2.5%, but the prevalence for those likely to have been identified on GP practice registers (those with moderate, severe and profound ID) is now 0.45%. Should this mean a change in the role of the specialist nursing and psychiatric services? Closer working relationships and collaboration could improve communications and reduce duplication of clinical monitoring.By definition people with ID have impaired social functioning and limited cognitive ability that … ER -