Scotland publishes QoF data online

The first official practice by practice results for the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF) have appeared with the online publication of detailed QoF data for the whole of Scotland.

ISD Scotland, the body responsible for health statistics in the NHS in Scotland, has published QoF results for 1025 practices.  Almost all practices in Scotland took part in the QoF and across all GMS practices, 92.5% of the maximum points available were achieved.

Information included on the site includes name of the practice, the total number of points earned, the total payment the practice received and a breakdown of how much each practice scored in each of the clinical indicators and the non-clinical domains.

Information by NHS Board is also published along with prevalence data for the ten disease areas in the clinical domain.

Scotland is the first of the four home countries to publish results by practice although the other three countries are expected to follow suit. England announced last month that it was likely to publish practice results in early August.

The publication of detailed results for every practice in the country is inevitable under the Freedom of Information Act but has created some concern among GPs that such detailed information is available on what was described as voluntary part of the contract and that the data may be taken out of context.

The information on the Scottish site includes introductory text explaining what the Quality and Outcomes Framework involves, how it fits in to GP contract arrangements, a summary of the points and pounds available, how the prevalence system works and a description of the key stages in the QoF for 2004/5.

Dr Mary Church, joint chairman of the British Medical Association’s Scottish general Practitioner Committee, said interpretation of the data had to be undertaken with care.

She added: “"A lower quality achievement does not necessarily mean that patients are receiving a poorer quality of care. Taking part in the Quality and Outcomes Framework is voluntary and there will be a whole variety of reasons why some practices may not achieve as high quality scores as others, many of them outside the direct control of the practice, and this should be taken into consideration when looking at the figures.”

The results, due to be published on Friday, were delayed until very late in the day because of technical problems loading the information on to the website. However QOF scores for all practices were picked up by newspapers across Scotland as soon as they were available and papers including the Herald in Glasgow and the Scotsman published practice results.