Towards the development of integrated epilepsy services: an audit of documented epilepsy care.

Department of Health Economics, Trinity College, Dublin 2AbstractEffective chronic disease management (CDM) requires the ready availability and communication of accurate, clinicaldisease specific information. Using epilepsy as a probe into CDM, we report on the availability and reliability ofclinical information in the primary care records of people with epilepsy (PWE). The medical records of 374 PWE from53 general practices in the Mid-West region of Ireland were examined. Confirmation of an epilepsy diagnosis by aneurologist was documented for 132 (35%) patients. 282 (75%) patients had no documented evidence of receivingspecialist neurology review while 149 (40%) had not been reviewed by their GP in the previous two years for theirepilepsy. Significant variation in documentation of epilepsy specific information together with an inadequacy andinconsistency of existing epilepsy services was highlighted. IntroductionIn common with many countries