Table 3.

Baseline characteristics of included NHS General Practice (GP) surgeries

	Conventional GP surgery, median (25th–75th percentile), n=7274	IM/CAM GP surgery (subset 1),† median (25th–75th percentile), n=9
Number of registered patients	6698 (4162–9942)	7088 (4037–9534)
Male (%)	49.7 (48.8–50.9)	49.3 (46.9–49.4)
Aged 0–17 years (%)	20.5 (18.5–23.0)	21.2 (18.7–22.0)
Aged 18–64 years (%)	61.2 (58.7–64.2)	61.9 (60.3–62.4)
Aged 65+ years (%)	17.2 (12.3–21.4)	18.2 (14.0–18.4)
STAR-PU‡	3705 (2276–5599)	3716 (2315–5382)
Coronary heart disease (%)	3.3 (2.5–4.0)	2.8 (2.1–3.1)*
Heart failure (%)	0.7 (0.5–0.9)	0.5 (0.4–0.8)
Asthma (%)	6.0 (4.9–6.7)	5.1 (4.8–6.2)
COPD (%)	1.8 (1.3–2.4)	1.0 (0.8–2.0)
Cancer (%)	2.4 (1.7–3.0)	2.5 (2.2–2.9)*
Chronic kidney disease (%)	3.0 (2.0–4.1)	1.9 (1.2–2.9)
Diabetes (%)	5.4 (4.5–6.2)	3.9 (2.9–4.6)*
Deprivation score	0.27 (0.11–0.63)	0.36 (0.15–0.48)

*P<0.05.

†Subset 1: General Practices where an integrative medicine approach is taken with IM/CAM-trained General practitioners (GPs) (n=4) and General Practices listing IM/CAM therapy provision with IM/CAM-trained GP (n=5).

‡Oral antibacterial item-based STAR-PUs. The amount of STAR-PU per practice was estimated by multiplying the number of patients in each age–gender category by the relevant STAR-PU weights (see the Methods section for detailed explanation on STAR-PUs).

COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; NHS, National Health Service; STAR-PU, Specific Therapeutic Group Age–sex weightings Related Prescribing Unit.