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Is the Jarman underprivileged area score valid?
Insights
The Jarman underprivileged area score may reflect general practice needs. Higher mortality and incidence of treatable diseases in an area correlate with the score, suggesting its validity in assessing service demand.
Area of Science:
- General Practice
- Health Services Research
- Social Epidemiology
Background:
- A previously published validation of the underprivileged area score was incomplete.
- External validation using objective criteria beyond general practitioner (GP) opinion is necessary.
- The score aims to quantify factors influencing GP workload and service pressure.
Purpose of the Study:
- To validate the Jarman score using external criteria.
- To assess the association between the Jarman score and disease-specific mortality.
- To examine the relationship between the Jarman score and the incidence of specific treatable conditions.
Main Methods:
- The study analyzed the association between Jarman's score and mortality rates from conditions amenable to GP intervention.
- The study investigated the link between Jarman's score and the incidence of two key diseases requiring GP management.
- Data were used to establish external criterion validity for the Jarman score.
Main Results:
- A positive association was observed between the Jarman score and mortality from GP-amenable causes.
- The Jarman score showed a correlation with the incidence of the selected treatable diseases.
- These findings support the score's ability to reflect the need for general practice services.
Conclusions:
- The Jarman score demonstrates external criterion validity.
- The score appears to be a crude but useful indicator of general practice service needs.
- Further validation using objective health outcome data strengthens the score's utility.
Abstract:
A recently published validation of an underprivileged area score, which is intended to reflect factors that increase general practice workload or pressure on their services, was incomplete; a validation based on criteria other than the opinion of general practitioners is also required. Areas with higher mortality from diseases where general practitioner intervention can reduce mortality substantially are likely to have a greater need for general practice services. Similarly, the need for general practitioner services should be higher where the incidence of such treatable conditions is higher. This paper describes the association between Jarman's score and (a) mortality from causes that are amenable to general practice intervention and (b) incidence of two diseases where general practice intervention is important. Using these data the score appears to have external criterion validity and thus is likely to reflect, at least crudely, the need for general practitioner services.