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Data driven or data informed? How general practitioners use data to evaluate their own and colleagues’ clinical work in clusters
journal contribution
posted on 2024-01-11, 04:51 authored by CB Haase, Margaret BearmanMargaret Bearman, JB Brodersen, T Risor, K HoeyerIn contemporary policy discourses, data are presented as key assets for improving health-care quality: policymakers want health care to become ‘data driven’. In this article, we focus on a particular example of this ambition, namely a new Danish national quality development program for general practitioners (GPs) where doctors are placed in so-called ‘clusters’. In these clusters, GPs are obliged to assess their own and colleagues’ clinical quality with data derived from their own clinics—using comparisons, averages and benchmarks. Based on semi-structured interviews with Danish GPs and drawing on Science and Technology Studies, we explore how GPs understand these data, and what makes them trust—or question—a data analysis. The GPs describe how they change clinical practices based on these discussions of data. So, when and how do data for quality assurance come to influence their perceptions of quality? By exploring these issues, we carve out a role for a sociological engagement with evidence in everyday medical practices. In conclusion, we suggest a need to move from the aim of being data driven to one of being data informed.
History
Journal
Sociology of Health and IllnessPagination
1-18Location
EnglandPublisher DOI
ISSN
0141-9889eISSN
1467-9566Language
enPublisher
WileyUsage metrics
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Keywords
clusterdatadataficationevaluative judgementevidential valuegeneral practicenational quality programquality assessmentsClinical ResearchHealth Services7.3 Management and decision making8 Health and social care services research7 Management of diseases and conditions8.3 Policy, ethics, and research governanceGeneric health relevance
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