QoF to be ‘crucial’ in obesity plans

The government has said the Quality and Outcomes Framework will play a “crucial” part in its plans to tackle obesity as campaigners call for the QoF to be adapted to include more indicators on sexual health. 

Health secretary Alan Johnson told a Fabian Society meeting last week that QoF was a crucial part of the government’s efforts to tackle rising rates of obesity but that additional indicators would depend on negotiations with the BMA.

He added: “We’re ensuring we’re not overloading the QoF system, but yes it’s a crucial part of this.”

Johnson said obesity was the “biggest challenge” facing the health service with two thirds of all adults and one third of all children either overweight or obese which, if current trends continue, will rise to almost nine in ten adults and two thirds of all children by 2050.

Baroness Thornton, Labour health spokesperson in the House of Lords, has also indicated the government’s plans for further changes to the QoF in response to a parliamentary question, according to the GP magazine Pulse

In a document seen by the magazine the peer said the QoF should evolve. She added: ‘It should not be expected to grow year after year, but some indicators should be replaced, for example where behaviour has become part of standard practice and no longer needs to be incentivised.”

This week also sees the publication of a new report from the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV which calls for the QoF to be used to improve the incentives for GP practices to provide sexual health services which it claims are currently “patchy” across the country.

The report recommends that at national level the DH should “take immediate action to ensure key sexual health indicators are included in the future development of the Quality and Outcomes Framework.”

Link

Report from the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV