Publication of individual practice results for the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is likely to go ahead in England, Wales and Northern Ireland next month despite concerns from GP representatives.
The results from three of the four countries in the UK are due to appear more than two months after Scotland became the first to publish practice by practice QOF figures at the end of May .
A spokesman for the Welsh Assembly Government said that results for Wales were due to be published next month. However Dr Andrew Dearden, chairman of the Welsh General Practitioners’ committee and a GP in Cardiff, told EHI Primary Care that no agreement had been made reached on publication.
Dr Dearden said he had major reservations about publishing individual practice results. He added: “The idea of that kind of comparison is getting into league tables and league tables have been shown time and again to be pointless and yet we just seem to keep on doing them.”
Dr Dearden said the QOF results were of little use on their own. He added: “The numbers on their own tell you nothing about whether the practice has enough doctors, enough staff, what kind of patients it has and what kind of premises they are working from. It doesn’t tell you about the philosophy of the doctors or their attitude to exception reporting.”
In England a spokesman for the Health and Social Care Information Centre said figures at SHA level were due to appear on its website on 15 July with more detailed practice by practice figures due towards the end of August.
A spokesman for the DHSSPS in Northern Ireland told EHI Primary Care that practice by practice results would be published in downloadable spreadsheets on the department’s website in August.
Despite the profession’s concerns publication is seen to be inevitable under the Freedom of Information Act and the GPC has advised GPs that they should release their QOF figures, if approached at practice level, before national statistics are published.
However many PCOs are refusing individual requests for QOF information and telling those requesting the data that they must wait for the national publication of the information.
In Wales two health boards said the information was unavailable as the software was unable to provide the information in the format requested. However a spokesman for MSDInformatics, the company which provides the QOF software Contract Manager and Clinical Audit to Wales said the information needed was being processed by Assembly statisticians.
A Welsh Assembly Government spokesman told EHI Primary Care: "Contract Manager, the IT software in Wales to support the Quality and Outcomes Framework is entirely based on the Logical Query Indicator Specification.
"The software enables Local Health Boards (LHBs) to undertake practice comparison between overall QOF points attained, individual indicator points attained (and the associated percentage attained in relation to the individual indicator thresholds), overall financial attainment and financial attainment per indicator, i.e. everything that is necessary to support the LHBs in delivering and monitoring the Quality and Outcomes Framework.
"In addition to this the LHB software has the ability to group clusters of practices together to examine, for example, single handed practices, practices attaining services relative to specific NHS Trusts, ‘practices that need additional support’ etc.
"The Welsh Assembly Government has requested an enhancement from MSDi to facilitate the specific reporting of the raw prevalence numerator and denominator for the purposes of statistical analysis. This enhancement is being tested within the Assembly Government at present."
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