To better support vulnerable members of the population, there has been a focus on improving the coding of ethnicity across all NHS organisations, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Collecting and updating ethnicity data has been a challenge in Liverpool. To address this problem, three Liverpool CCG colleagues worked with myGP to improve coding of ethnicity via a text messaging campaign.
An EMIS based audit was created by the Liverpool CCG Business Intelligence team. This identified patients who hadn’t previously provided their ethnicity. The resulting patient list was imported into myGP and used to send a purpose-built ethnicity patient questionnaire. When patients received the questionnaire, they were asked to enter their date of birth and select their ethnicity from a prepopulated list which was then automatically updated in the GP record.
In the space of a month 33 practices sent Ethnicity Patient Questionnaires and received 8,707 responses, which were then automatically coded into clinical records. Since being implemented, this has saved practice staff over 290 hours of administrative data entry.
