TY - JOUR T1 - Chronic care services and variation between Danish general practices: a nationwide cohort study JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - e285 LP - e292 DO - 10.3399/BJGP.2021.0419 VL - 72 IS - 717 AU - Anders Prior AU - Claus Høstrup Vestergaard AU - Anette Riisgaard Ribe AU - Annelli Sandbæk AU - Flemming Bro AU - Peter Vedsted AU - Susan Smith AU - Mogens Vestergaard AU - Morten Fenger-Grøn Y1 - 2022/04/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/72/717/e285.abstract N2 - Background Little is known about variations in the provision of chronic care services in primary care.Aim To describe the frequency of chronic care services provided by GPs and analyse the extent of non-random variation in service provision.Design and setting Nationwide cohort study undertaken in Denmark using data from 2016.Method Information on chronic care services was obtained from national health registers, including annual chronic care consultations, chronic care procedures, outreach home visits, and talk therapy. The associations between services provided, patient morbidity, and socioeconomic factors were estimated. Service variations were analysed, and excess variation related to practice-specific factors was estimated while accounting for random variation.Results Chronic care provision was associated with increasing patient age, increasing number of long-term conditions, and indicators of low socioeconomic status. Variation across practices ranged from 1.4 to 128 times more than expected after adjusting for differences in patient population and random variation. Variation related to practice-specific factors was present for all the chronic care services that were investigated. Older patients with lower socioeconomic status and multimorbidity were clustered in practices with low propensity to provide certain chronic care services.Conclusion Chronic care was provided to patients typically in need of health care, that is, older adults, those with multimorbidity, and those with low socioeconomic status, but service provision varied more than expected across practices. GPs provided slightly fewer chronic care services than expected in practices where many patients with multimorbidity and low socioeconomic status were clustered, suggesting inverse care law mechanisms. ER -