A comparison of doctors' practice in notifying addicts to the Home Office and reporting them to the North Western...

Doctors have been required to notify named addict patients to the Chief Medical Officer at the Home Office since 1968, and since 1990 have been encouraged to report voluntarily all their drug misusing patients to anonymized NHS regional databases. The North Western Drug Misuse Database, set-up for research purposes in 1985, was the forerunner of these databases. Compliance by doctors from three North Western District Health Authorities with both data collection systems between 1986 and 1989 was assessed by matching the names of notified addicts with the attributors of individuals reported to the NWDMD as users of notifiable drugs. By 1989 72% of addicts notified were also reported to the NWDMD although doctors working in hospital general departments still tended only to notify them. There was no evidence that particular general practitioners consistently did not notify their addict patients while reporting them to the NWDMD. The findings suggest that it will take some time for doctors to become accustomed to reporting all their drug misusing patients to the regional databases as well as notifying to Home Office those who met the notification criteria.