Morbidity severity classifying routine consultations from English and Dutch general practice indicated physical health status.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the construct validity of morbidity severity scales based on routine consultation data by studying their associations with sociodemographic factors and physical health.


METHODS
Study participants were 11,232 English adults aged 50 years and over and 9,664 Dutch adults aged 18 years and over, and their consulting morbidity data in a 12-month period were linked to their physical health data. Consulters with any of 115 morbidities classified on four ordinal scales of severity ("chronicity," "time course," "health care use," and "patient impact") were compared to all other consulters.


RESULTS
As hypothesized, in both countries, morbidity severity was associated with older age, female gender, more deprivation (all comparisons P< or =0.05), and poor physical health (all trends P<0.001). The estimated strengths of association of poor physical health with the highest severity category expressed as odds ratios, for each of the four scales, were 5.4 for life-threatening on the "chronicity" scale, 1.8 for time course, 2.8 for high health care use, and 3.7 for high patient impact.


CONCLUSIONS
Four scales of morbidity severity have been validated in English and Dutch settings, and they offer the potential to use simple routine consultation data as an indicator of physical health status in populations from general practice.
Kadam
U T
UT
Primary Care Sciences Research Centre, Keele University, Staffordshire, England ST5 5BG, United Kingdom. u.kadam@cphc.keele.ac.uk
Schellevis
F G
FG
van der Windt
D A W M
DA
de Vet
H C W
HC
Bouter
L M
LM
Croft
P R
PR
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D004739:England; D005194:Family Practice; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009017:Morbidity; D009426:Netherlands; D016017:Odds Ratio; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors