Giardiasis in North West England: Faecal Specimen Requesting Rates by GP Practice

Many cases of giardiasis in the UK are undiagnosed and among other things, diagnosis is dependent upon the readiness of GPs to request a specimen. The aim of this study is to assess the rate of specimens requested per GP practice in Central Lancashire, to examine the dierences between GP practices and to estimate the pattern of unexplained spatial variation in the practice rate of specimens after adjustment for deprivation. To achieve this, we tted a set of binomial and Poisson regression models, with random eects for GP practice. Our analysis suggests that there were dierences in the rate of specimens by GP practices (p-value