QOF Indicators21 Jan 2009

Ask us for a copy now!

The new GMS QOF Indicators have now been published for the year 2009-2010.  They have been several minor but no major changes or upsets!

The full list of indicators seems to us to be quite difficult to find on the internet.  Even more difficult to find is the guidance document for the GMS QOF contract.  This not only runs to well over 100 pages but is also rather difficult to follow. The guidance for the implementation of the 2009-2010 QOF Indicators is not available yet but we have prepared a simplified version of the 2008 guidance that we are happy to e-mail to you if you contact us.  We have not included it here because it still runs to over 50 pages. Use the Contact Us page to request your copy.

Basically, the QOF has two halves, the Clinical Indicators and the Organisational Indicators. 

Clinical Indicators:  The guidance for the clinical indicators is in two parts: 

Firstly there is the rationale for including the basic condition (such as CHD) and the individual indicators (such as the proportion of CKD patients with successfully treated blood pressure).  The "rationale" are the reasons why the various indicators have been included.

Secondly, for each indicator is a paragraph headed "report and verification".  Basically this says how practices should record information and what the verifier needs to look for.

In our version, we have separated the rationale from the report and verification into two sections.  The rationales appear in the same order as the Indicators in the main list so you find the indicator index number and there is the rationale.  The same system is used for the report and verification section.

Organisational Indicators:  In this part of QOF, the guidance is in four parts and these appear together for each indicator.  They are:

• Practice guidance – this is similar to the clinical indicator rationales.
• Written evidence – lists the information that the practice needs to submit.
• Assessment visit – describes how the visiting team verify the written evidence.
• Assessors guidance – ensures that all practices are (hopefully) judged in a uniform way.

It all sounds very complicated but is not so in practice.  The rationale for the various indicators, in particular, makes very interesting reading.