How well do family practitioner committee and general practice records agree? Experience in a semi-rural practice

General practice notes may be inaccurate for various reasons. A study was carried out in one semi-rural practice to investigate the agreement between records held by the family practitioner committee and those kept in the practice. Details on the practice notes and the family practitioner committee list were compared for 800 patients. The details examined included name, sex, date of birth, address and National Health Service number. While 58% of records agreed, discrepancies occurred in 339 records (42%). The most common discrepancies concerned the patient's address (30.6%), date of birth (9.4%) and NHS number (8.0%). Nearly 5% of the practice notes appeared to be for patients who were no longer on the practice list or dependent on its care. These findings have implications under the new general practitioner contract where screening programmes, target related payments, and increased capitation fees require accurate practice records.