Long COVID coding in primary care.¶

This OpenSAFELY report is a routine update of our peer-review paper published in the British Journal of General Practice on the Clinical coding of long COVID in English primary care: a federated analysis of 58 million patient records in situ using OpenSAFELY.

It is a routine update of the analysis described in the paper. The data requires careful interpretation and there are a number of caveats. Please read the full detail about our methods and discussionis and the full analytical methods on this routine report are available on GitHub.

OpenSAFELY is a new secure analytics platform for electronic patient records built on behalf of NHS England to deliver urgent academic and operational research during the pandemic. You can read more about OpenSAFELY on our website.

Results¶

Counts and rates of long COVID coding stratified by demographic variable¶

This is equivalent to Table 2 from the paper

There were 162,881 people who have been given a diagnostic code for long COVID to date. Counts for each software system are:

TPP       40,096.0
EMIS     122,785.0
Totals   162,881.0
dtype: float64

The overall rate of long COVID coding in the population was 287.6 per 100,000 people. Rates for each software system are:

TPP      164.9
EMIS     379.9
Totals   287.6
dtype: float64

		TPP			EMIS			Totals
		Long COVID	Rate per 100,000	%	Long COVID	Rate per 100,000	%	Long COVID	%	Rate per 100,000
age_group	0-17	3185	65.3	7.9	11136	169.4	9.1	14321	8.8	125.1
	18-24	2546	132.6	6.3	8463	321.8	6.9	11009	6.8	242.0
	25-34	5747	170.5	14.3	19448	423.1	15.8	25195	15.5	316.2
	35-44	8459	259.9	21.1	26725	591.5	21.8	35184	21.6	452.7
	45-54	9489	290.0	23.7	27475	626.9	22.4	36964	22.7	482.9
	55-69	8545	200.4	21.3	23613	429.0	19.2	32158	19.7	329.2
	70-79	1627	77.0	4.1	4436	169.8	3.6	6063	3.7	128.3
	80+	498	40.4	1.2	1489	97.8	1.2	1987	1.2	72.1
sex	F	25004	205.7	62.4	75759	469.9	61.7	100763	61.9	356.3
sex	M	15092	124.2	37.6	47026	290.0	38.3	62118	38.1	219.0
region	East of England	6848	120.3	17.1	6165	490.8	5.0	13013	8.0	187.3
	East Midlands	5260	125.4	13.1	1809	246.1	1.5	7069	4.3	143.4
	London	1616	95.5	4.0	22429	304.2	18.3	24045	14.8	265.3
	North East	4103	354.3	10.2	4359	382.8	3.6	8462	5.2	368.5
	North West	4504	214.0	11.2	35612	540.2	29.0	40116	24.6	461.3
	South East	3594	221.4	9.0	17687	257.9	14.4	21281	13.1	250.9
	South West	6003	180.6	15.0	15925	672.0	13.0	21928	13.5	385.2
	West Midlands	1210	120.9	3.0	15866	326.3	12.9	17076	10.5	291.3
	Yorkshire and The Humber	6951	198.1	17.3	2822	253.7	2.3	9773	6.0	211.5
imd	Missing	897	151.4	2.2	310	322.2	0.3	1207	0.7	175.3
	Most deprived 1	6900	141.9	17.2	26556	398.9	21.6	33456	20.5	290.4
	2	7664	160.8	19.1	26134	381.6	21.3	33798	20.8	291.0
	3	8288	165.1	20.7	24171	385.4	19.7	32459	19.9	287.4
	4	8717	184.6	21.7	23028	377.9	18.8	31745	19.5	293.5
	Least deprived 5	7630	175.6	19.0	22586	354.5	18.4	30216	18.6	282.0
ethnicity	Missing	9575	143.2	23.9	34655	332.8	28.2	44230	27.2	258.7
	White	26762	180.8	66.7	70019	409.8	57.0	96781	59.4	303.5
	Mixed	447	139.2	1.1	2011	361.4	1.6	2458	1.5	280.1
	South Asian	2290	152.5	5.7	10252	422.7	8.3	12542	7.7	319.4
	Black	591	114.5	1.5	4198	370.9	3.4	4789	2.9	290.6
	Other	431	90.4	1.1	1650	227.2	1.3	2081	1.3	173.0

Volume of code use in individual practices¶

Stratified by the electronic health record provider of the practice (TPP/SystmOne or EMIS).

Use of long COVID codes over time¶

Stratified by the electronic health record provider of the practice (TPP/SystmOne or EMIS). Reporting lag may affect recent dates.

This is distinct from the above table in that it counts all coded events, including where patients have been coded more than once.

There were 278,245 long COVID codes used in total. Counts for each software system were:

TPP      60,005.0
EMIS    218,240.0
Total   278,245.0
dtype: float64

		TPP		EMIS		Total
	term	Total records	%	Total records	%	Total records	%
1325161000000102	Post-COVID-19 syndrome	8,941.0	14.9	117,489.0	53.8	126,430.0	45.4
1325181000000106	Ongoing symptomatic disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2	8,205.0	13.7	27,777.0	12.7	35,982.0	12.9
1325021000000106	Signposting to Your COVID Recovery	16,727.0	27.9	44,654.0	20.5	61,381.0	22.1
1325031000000108	Referral to post-COVID assessment clinic	16,881.0	28.1	20,548.0	9.4	37,429.0	13.5
1325041000000104	Referral to Your COVID Recovery rehabilitation platform	7,272.0	12.1	3,046.0	1.4	10,318.0	3.7
1325051000000101	Newcastle post-COVID syndrome Follow-up Screening Questionnaire	144.0	0.2	2,100.0	1.0	2,244.0	0.8
1325061000000103	Assessment using Newcastle post-COVID syndrome Follow-up Screening Questionnaire	78.0	0.1	866.0	0.4	944.0	0.3
1325071000000105	COVID-19 Yorkshire Rehabilitation Screening tool	699.0	1.2	478.0	0.2	1,177.0	0.4
1325081000000107	Assessment using COVID-19 Yorkshire Rehabilitation Screening tool	1,016.0	1.7	271.0	0.1	1,287.0	0.5
1325091000000109	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale patient self-report	9.0	0.0	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]	9.0	0.0
1325101000000101	Assessment using Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale patient self-report	NaN	NaN	202.0	0.1	202.0	0.1
1325121000000105	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale patient self-report final scale grade	NaN	NaN	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]
1325131000000107	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale structured interview final scale grade	0.0	0.0	10.0	0.0	10.0	0.0
1325141000000103	Assessment using Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale structured interview	33.0	0.1	799.0	0.4	832.0	0.3
1325151000000100	Post-COVID-19 Functional Status Scale structured interview	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]	[REDACTED]

Characteristics of the cohort¶

This is equivalent to Table 1 in the paper

There were 56,644,992 people in the cohort in total. In practices that use TPP software, there were 24,306,447, while in practices that use EMIS software, there were 32,338,545 people.