Lower respiratory tract infections GP in-hours daily consultation rate
Last updated on Thursday, 6 March 2025 at 04:12pm
Summary
- Topic
- lower-respiratory-tract-infection
- Category
- syndromic
- API name
lower-respiratory-tract-infection_syndromic_GPInHours_rateByDay
Rationale
Monitoring trends in daily GP in-hours consultation rates can provide an early warning of human public health threats and provide detail to inform public health action.
Definition
The metric reports the daily GP in-hours consultation rate per 100,000 people, for lower respiratory tract infections at participating GP practices in England.
Methodology
Lower respiratory tract infections are identified from the diagnoses recorded during GP in-hours consultations. The diagnoses are based on signs and or symptoms and may not be lab confirmed.
Some syndromic indicators are hierarchical. The lower respiratory tract infections indicator includes the following diagnoses:
- pneumonia
- bronchiolitis
- acute bronchitis
- other and non-specific lower respiratory tract infections
The data presented are based on a sentinel syndromic surveillance system, not all GP practices in England are included. We receive an automated feed of anonymised GP in-hours consultation data from participating practices from 2 sources: The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) and Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners Clinical Informatics Digital Hub (ORCHID).
Caveats
Changes to national advice and guidance on access to healthcare services means trends should be treated with caution. The COVID-19 pandemic also involved updates and changes to service provision.
Not all GP practices in England are included in the data and coverage varies by location.
The most recent weekend is not included in the data, since data from ORCHID are currently only available up to the most recent Friday each week.