Quality and Costs of Primary care in Europe

Study Ojective

QUALICOPC (Quality and Costs of Primary care in Europe) is a multi-country study, co-financed by the European Commission in the 7th Framework Programme that aims to evaluate primary care systems in Europe in terms of quality, equity and costs.

QUALICOPC aims to survey 220 GPs in each country (for small countries, like Iceland, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Malta, the target is 80-100). The questionnaire, developed by the QUALICOPC research team, contains questions on:

• practice type and organisation
• clinical tasks (curative and preventive)
• coordination and integration of services
• aspects of workload.

Almost all questions have multiple choice answers.

Participation conditions and Centers

80 GPs will be randomly selected to participate in the survey. GPs will be approached in two stages. GPs will be informed in a first place and asked to participate in the GP survey and allow their patients to be surveyed. Only GPs who accept that their patients will be surveyed (by an external fieldworker visiting the practice) will be included in the GP survey.

The survey among patients will include adult patients only (18 years or older) and will be carried out in all practices included in the GPs survey. So, in at least 80 practices, 10 adult patients attending the doctor’s practice will be approached to fill in a questionnaire.