Characteristics of general practitioners with high and low recall rates

This study showed that general practitioners altered their workload and the clinical content of their practice by the number of patients that they asked to return and the number of doctor-initiated consultations that they carried out. Doctors with a high recall rate, who asked more of their patients to return, saw more chronic illness and investigated their patients' illnesses more. They were more likely to visit their patients and to make two or more diagnoses, their second diagnosis having an even greater bias to chronic illness. When they did give a prescription it was likely to be for two or more items at a consultation. They involved the primary health care team more and their patients were more likely to be elderly, female and of a higher social class. The low recall doctors asked few patients to return, saw less chronic illness and more acute episodic types of illness. They were more likely to see their patients in surgery and make a single diagnosis and give either none or one prescription. They were less likely either to involve the primary health care team or to investigate their patients. Their patients were younger, male and of a lower social class. Personality, undergraduate education, and postgraduate training seemed to be major influences on these differing characteristics. The results have implications for partnership, individual doctors and patients in the provision of whole person medicine.