Jim Fitzpatrick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Fitzpatrick on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect on the (a) numbers of GP practices and (b) services offered by GP practices of removing performance indicators from the Quality Outcomes Framework.

Jane Ellison

We have reduced the number of indicators in the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) by more than a third. This is intended to free up time for general practitioners (GPs) to provide more personalised care which includes the new responsibility of providing a named GP for all of their patients aged 75 and over. The money released from the QOF will be reinvested in general practice.

We understand that NHS England is currently developing the specifications and reporting protocols that will be required to capture the information provided by the retired QOF indicators.

This will enable NHS England’s commissioning teams, clinical commissioning groups and the Care Quality Commission to take this information into account in reaching rounded judgements about the quality of care provided by general practice. It will also be used to evaluate the impact of the indicators that were retired on 1 April 2014, and will inform future decisions about the development of QOF.

NHS England has recently undertaken an analysis to identify ‘outlier’ practices – those that will lose the largest amount of funding per patient as a result of the phasing out of the Minimum Practice Income Guarantee. Details of these practices have been sent to NHS England area teams.

In a small number of cases where there are exceptional underlying factors that necessitate additional funding – for example because a practice is serving an atypical population – it is anticipated that area teams will meet with the practices to discuss and agree arrangements to ensure that appropriate services for patients continue to be available.