UK and Croatia: Family Practice, its Medical Records and Computerisation in the Context of an Enlarged Europe

摘要

Croatia and the UK have list based general practice systems and are progressively computerizing family practice. There are lessons for both countries from each others experience.Method: These were derived from a literature review and visits to practices in both countries Results: Both countries had developed unique but sophisticated paper based primary care record systems. They have now moved to promote the computerization of primary care; and see this as integral to patient safety, quality improvement, and derivation of data for health service management. However, the development of primary care computing has been an organic process with small suppliers producing trial systems with natural selection of the more effective system.Conclusions: IT is seen as a key to improving patient safety, the quality and efficiency of primary care. The lack of a theoretical framework for the comparison of systems hampers the development and selection of an optimum system.