TY - JOUR T1 - Testing a proactive approach to frailty identification: the electronic frailty index JF - BMJ Open Quality JO - BMJ Open Qual DO - 10.1136/bmjoq-2019-000682 VL - 8 IS - 3 SP - e000682 AU - Nathan Devereux AU - Graham Ellis AU - Laura Dobie AU - Paul Baughan AU - Thomas Monaghan Y1 - 2019/08/01 UR - http://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/content/8/3/e000682.abstract N2 - Frailty is the manifestation of ageing that is associated with poor outcomes, including increased risk of disability, hospital admission, institutional care or death.1 It can have a considerable impact on a person’s quality of life, and lead to increased use of primary care and unplanned secondary care services.However, frailty is not an inevitable part of ageing, and an individual’s frailty state is not constant: it can be improved or exacerbated.2 Identifying people with frailty in primary care, and targeting them with appropriate interventions, can delay the progression of this condition.3AimIn order to improve outcomes for people with frailty, we needed to develop and test a consistent method to identify people, which could be used in a community setting and implemented at a national scale throughout Scotland.UnderstandWe selected the electronic frailty index (eFI) as the method to explore in Scotland, as it had been validated in England against a population of 900 000 and uses existing data to identify a person’s condition.1 It was unclear whether it would accurately identify people with frailty using Scottish data and IT infrastructure.Test and refineWe tested the eFI on a population of 75 311 (12 496 aged ≥65) across nine general practitioner (GP) practices in three health and social care partnerships … ER -