Secondary uses of clinical data in primary care

This paper, presented as a panel at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Fall Symposium 2006, explores a number of secondary uses of primary care clinical data derived from point-of care systems, and the issues arising from those uses. The authors (from the USA and the UK) describe, compare and contrast some secondary uses: pay-for-performance, public disclosure, clinical audit, health resource planning, and clinical system usage; in various environments: national health system, network of small family practice offices, and university teaching centres. In the UK, such data are now being used in pay-for-performance for GPs, and approximately 35% of their salary has been put at risk, which has resulted in close scrutiny. In the USA, pay-for-performance is at an earlier stage but is increasingly prevalent and continues to be hotly debated. Some of the issues that arise from these uses of clinical data _data quality including accuracy, comparability, perverse incentives, effect of secondary uses on care provision, and security and confidentiality among others _were discussed. Finally, options and opportunities for improving secondary uses of data in the light of the issues covered earlier were considered