Summary
Quality and Outcomes Framework The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is a system designed to remunerate general practices for providing good quality care to their patients, and to help fund work to further improve the quality of health care delivered. It is a fundamental part of the General Medical Services (GMS) Contract, introduced in 2004.
Measures, called indicators are agreed as part of the GP contract negotiations every year. These indicators have points attached that are given to GP practices based on how they are doing against these measures.
A new dashboard is created when the indicators change but in general they cover:
- management of some of the most common chronic conditions, for example asthma and diabetes
- management of major public health concerns, for example smoking and obesity
- providing preventative services such as screening or blood pressure checks
What you can find out
- You can see how your GP practice, and other practices, performed against the measures.
- You can find out how common certain conditions are in your area, and other areas. This is called prevalence, and is the percentage of all patients who have the condition. For example if 10 patients out of a hundred patients have asthma, this is a 10 per cent prevalence. You can compare this against the national average.
What the report can’t tell you
You can’t use the figures to rank GP practices, because:
- These measurements only look at part of what GP practices do
- Practices can only get points for an indicator if they have patients with that particular condition
- GPs don’t have to take part in the data collection so there isn’t data for every practice
You can’t compare performance over time, because indicators change from year to year.
For the latest information please click on the following link
Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) online database – NHS Digital