TY - JOUR T1 - Variation in tests for people with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or chronic kidney disease in UK primary care JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract DO - 10.3399/bjgp19X703193 VL - 69 IS - suppl 1 SP - bjgp19X703193 AU - Rita Patel AU - Martha Elwenspoek AU - Jessica Watson AU - Ed Mann AU - Katharine Alsop AU - Penny Whiting Y1 - 2019/06/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/69/suppl_1/bjgp19X703193.abstract N2 - Background Rates of pathology testing are rising in the UK, with significant geographical variability. Around 50% of overall GP laboratory testing represents monitoring for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Overuse of tests for monitoring chronic conditions may be a potential source of harm; causing patient anxiety, downstream tests/referrals, overdiagnosis, increase GP workload and increase health service costs. On the other hand, failure to test may lead to missed diagnoses, complications, patient harm and litigation.Aim This study aims to use an open cohort to examine current variation in the use of tests for individuals with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and CKD>2 across the UK.Method Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) data will be used to consider what tests have been ordered for people with these conditions and look at variation over time, and by region, age, sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position using age–sex-standardised utilisation rates, descriptive statistics, and multilevel Poisson regression.Results An estimated 1.2 million patients within the CPRD database have previously been diagnosed with any of the chronic conditions with over 11 million tests. Some 1 029 496 patients have hypertension, 344 613 with diabetes, and 271 897 with CKD>2, with much overlap. The results from this study will help to find what tests are currently used among patients with these conditions and to quantify variation in testing.Conclusion This work will be used to inform the development of testing algorithms for patients with these conditions in primary care. ER -