Towards the development of integrated epilepsy services: an audit of documented epilepsy care.

Effective chronic disease management (CDM) requires the ready availability and communication of accurate, clinical disease specific information. Using epilepsy as a probe into CDM, we report on the availability and reliability of clinical information in the primary care records of people with epilepsy (PWE). The medical records of 374 PWE from 53 general practices in the Mid-West region of Ireland were examined. Confirmation of an epilepsy diagnosis by a neurologist was documented for 132 (35%) patients. 282 (75%) patients had no documented evidence of receiving specialist neurology review while 149 (40%) had not been reviewed by their GP in the previous two years for their epilepsy. Significant variation in documentation of epilepsy specific information together with an inadequacy and inconsistency of existing epilepsy services was highlighted.