Baseline characteristics and comparability of older multimorbid patients with polypharmacy and general practitioners participating in a randomized controlled primary care trial

Table 2 Baseline characteristics of general practitioners in the OPTICA trial compared to the general practitioners in the FIRE database

Characteristics	OPTICA GPs (N = 43)	FIRE GPs (N = 227)¹	P-value⁵	Absolute standardized difference⁶
Median age (IQR)	54 (45–60)	51 (44–58)	0.572	0.073
Median years since starting to work as GP (IQR)	15 (6–23)	10 (5–21)	0.302	0.159
Sex
Women (%)	8 (19)	80 (35)	0.034	0.385
Men (%)	35 (81)	146 (65)	0.034	0.385
Employment status
Self-employed (%)	28 (70)	131 (63)	0.474	0.143
Employed (%)	12 (30)	76 (37)	0.474	0.143
GP practice type
Group practice (%)	36 (84)	200 (88)	0.452	0.126
Single practice (%)	7 (16)	27 (12)	0.452	0.126
Location
Non-urban (%)	17 (40)	51 (23)	0.022	0.375
Urban (%)	26 (60)	176 (78)	0.022	0.375
Self-dispensation of medications in GP office²
Yes (%)	25 (60)	175 (77)	0.046	0.386
No (%)	13 (31)	41 (18)
Limited³ (%)	4 (10)	11 (5)
Median work percentage (IQR)	80 (80–100)	80 (60–100)	0.020	0.401
Participation in integrated care model
Yes	39 (93)	202 (95)	0.456	0.103
No	3 (7)	10 (5)	0.456	0.103
Median percentage of eligible patients based on OPTICA inclusion criteria (IQR)⁴	6 (3–14)	7 (4–11)	0.614	0.287

Abbreviations: GP General practitioner, IQR Interquartile range, OPTICA Optimizing PharmacoTherapy in older multimorbid adults In primary CAre, FIRE Family medicine ICPC Research using Electronic medical records
¹As of spring May 2019, excludes GPs who were part of the OPTICA trial and who did not have any eligible patients for the OPTICA trial
²Depending on the area/region they work in, GPs in Switzerland may be able to sell and dispense medications to their patients
³Only for selected medications
⁴ ≥ 5 medications from different ATC groups and age ≥ 65 years. The other inclusion and exclusion criteria were not implemented, as they had to be double checked by the GPs
⁵For categorical variables we performed a Fisher’s exact text and for continuous variables a Kruskal–Wallis test was performed; P-values of < 0.05 represent that there is evidence for a statistically significant difference between the two groups
⁶An imbalance between the two groups was previously defined as an absolute standardize difference value > 0.2

ISSN: 2731-4553