Analyse distances patients to GP practices

In order for a GP to be able to arrive promptly at a patient's location in acute situations, it is important that the patients of a GP do not live too far from the practice. In practice, however, people often remain registered with their current GP for a long time even after moving. On behalf of Huisartsen Zuid-Kennemerland (HZK), Dialogic analysed the distances between patients and practices for the practices affiliated with HZK. For each practice, we provided a map indicating the area where a certain percentage of registered patients (50%, 80%, etc.) reside. The figure below shows an example based on fictional data (the dots on the map represent GP practices). Additionally, we analysed the total number of individuals residing within a practice's catchment area (estimated based on CBS population data). We also determined the percentage of patients registered with the nearest practice compared to the total number of patients. The developed method can easily be replicated for other GP practices and used to (continuously) monitor the distribution of patients across GP practices. Due to the sensitive nature of the information, a method was developed in collaboration with HZK that requires as little sensitive data as possible (for instance, we only use the first four digits of a postcode, which poses some challenges in accurately estimating distances). Dialogic did not require, and of course did not receive, access to personally identifiable patient data. Additionally, a DPIA (data privacy impact assessment) was conducted beforehand.