Idris Fallon’s first episode resolved on its own, which is common, and is also why the second one nearly did not get looked at.
The practice runs a flag on anyone presenting three times with the same complaint and no diagnosis, regardless of what was concluded each time.
What continuity is worth
Continuity was measured for a year: what proportion of appointments a patient had with the clinician who knew them. It had fallen to under a third.
Resolution is not the same as explanation. We started recording which one we actually had.
Dr. Priya Ramanathan, general practice
What the practice changed
Nothing about the individual consultations was careless. Every clinician was working correctly from what was in front of them; nobody’s job was to look at the shape of the whole thing.
“It was a database that caught it,” he says. “I’m fine with that. Something caught it.”
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