Retrospective review of abdominal aortic aneurysm deaths in New Zealand: what proportion of deaths is potentially preventable by a screening programme in the contemporary setting?

Objectives: To describe the proportions of people dying from abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) who might have benefited from a formal screening programme for AAA.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional review of deaths.

Setting And Study Populations: All AAA deaths registered in New Zealand from 2010 to 2014 in the absence of a national AAA screening programme.

Urate testing in gout: why, when and how.

Urate is a frequently measured blood test in people with gout and those at risk of gout. Although gout is potentially curable with long-term urate lowering therapy, confusion about the details of urate measurement has contributed to suboptimal care. In this article, we provide recommendations regarding urate testing in gout, focusing on the use of this test in clinical practice.

Service planning implications of estimating Primary Health Organisation enrolment rate based on a Health Service Utilisation population rather than a Census-derived population.

Aim: Estimating Primary Health Organisation (PHO) enrolment rates with a census-derived estimated resident population denominator may provide misleading results because of numerator and denominator mismatch. This study uses the Health Service Utilisation (HSU) population denominator as an alternative.

Method: A HSU population was generated by record linkage of routinely collected datasets from the Ministry of Health via encrypted National Health Index (NHI).

Variation in gout care in Aotearoa New Zealand: a national analysis of quality markers.

Aim: To examine whether there was variation in markers for the quality of gout care using national linked data for the entire Aotearoa New Zealand population.

Method: Data drawn for the New Zealand Atlas of Healthcare Variation was used to examine regularity of allopurinol dispensing, laboratory testing for serum urate, and acute hospitalisation for gout. Standardised rates by age, gender, ethnicity and District Health Board (DHB) of domicile were calculated.

Gout, diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the Aotearoa New Zealand adult population: co-prevalence and implications for clinical practice.

Aims: To determine the co-prevalence of gout, diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the entire Aotearoa New Zealand adult population to inform clinical practice.

Methods: Algorithms based on hospital admissions, outpatient visits, drug dispensing, laboratory test data and mortality for the Aotearoa New Zealand Health Tracker (ANZHT) population aged ≥20 years (n = 3,036,093) were used to estimate the prevalence of those identified with gout, diabetes and CVD in 2009.

Results: The crude prevalence in the adult ANZHT population of gout was 3.

Potential unmet need for gout diagnosis and treatment: capture-recapture analysis of a national administrative dataset.

Objective: To estimate the degree of undercount of people diagnosed with gout in administrative datasets using capture-recapture methods.

Methods: Hospitalization and drug dispensing claims (allopurinol or colchicine) data for all Aotearoa New Zealand were used to estimate the prevalence of gout in 2009 (n = 4 295 296). As a comparison, we calculated gout prevalence using a large primary care dataset using general practitioner diagnosis and prescribing records (n = 555 313).

National prevalence of gout derived from administrative health data in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Objective: Previous small studies in Aotearoa New Zealand have indicated a high prevalence of gout. This study sought to determine the prevalence of gout in the entire Aotearoa New Zealand population using national-level health data sets.

Methods: We used hospitalization and drug dispensing claims for allopurinol and colchicine for the entire Aotearoa New Zealand population from the Aotearoa New Zealand Health Tracker (ANZHT) to estimate the prevalence of gout in 2009, stratified by age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status (n = 4 295 296).

Healthcare services funded by Counties Manukau District Health Board for people in the last year of life.

Introduction: The last year of life is often associated with a high level of healthcare utilisation and cost. To date, little information is available regarding the healthcare utilisation patterns in the last year of life in New Zealand.

Aim: To describe the healthcare utilisation patterns and costs of the residents of Counties Manukau District Health Board (CMDHB) region in the 1-year period prior to death in 2008.

Putting population health into practice through primary health care.

The introduction of the Primary Health Care Strategy has offered opportunities to take a population health approach to the planning and delivery of primary health care. The lack of a common understanding of population health between primary care and public health has been the prompt for a group of academics and practitioners to join forces and produce this statement on a population health approach to primary care, through primary health care. This paper takes the position that the features of a population health approach (such as a concern for equity, community participation, teamwork and attention to the determinants of health) enhance general practice care rather than undermine it.

Debunking the myths to provide 21st Century management of gout.

Epidemiologic and recent qualitative research suggests that the impact of under-treated gout is far more significant than many health professionals realise. The magnitude of this impact for Maaori and Pacific men of working age has been identified as a particular concern by the recently formed Maaori Gout Action Group in Counties Manukau District Health Board (South Auckland, New Zealand). The Group has identified that to achieve modern management of gout, those with gout need to be supported by primary care practitioners who are aware of the need for early intervention with allopurinol, as well as whaanau/families and communities who understand the impact and causes of gout and the lifestyle changes that are needed alongside long-term allopurinol.