Keywords: General practice, Broad Consent, Primary Care database.
Background:
To overcome data protection hurdles, obtaining Broad Consent becomes an increasingly important prerequisite for conducting research with patient data for different or multiple purposes. BeoNet-Halle is a German database that links data across specialties using Broad Consent. This study describes the first sample from patients who gave their Broad Consent in a General practitioner setting.
Research questions:
The aim is to identify differences between patients who gave and those that did not give Broad Consent in terms of socioeconomic and morbidity-related variables and in relation to the frequency of physician-patient contacts.
Method:
In this single-center, retrospective cohort study there are three patient groups: Patients who consented, patients that did not give consent and a representative control group of patients visiting the general practice during the recruitment period. A socio-demographic questionnaire was sent per mail to a subsample of all three patient groups. Additional patient data was collected from the BeoNet-Halle database to describe sample differences
Results:
A total of 277 patients consented during the initial recruitment phase from May 2021 to June 2022 while 119 patients denied consent. About 350 Patients were calculated as a necessary sample size for the control group. Preliminary analyses revealed a matched gender ratio of the Broad Consent sample (female = 53.1%, male = 46.2%, not specified = 0,7%).
Conclusions:
We hypothesize that patients who gave consent will differ from those who did not in terms of sociodemographic and morbidity variables, as well as frequency of physician-patient contacts. Patients with higher education might show an increased willingness to support health services research.
Points for discussion:
What are potential research areas for which Broad Consent data from BeoNet are particularly appropriate?
What do the findings regarding income and educational attainment mean for future research, particularly with respect to the representativeness of broad consent data?
What do you think are the challenges of conducting research with Broad Consent data?