QMAS fails to take strain in end of year rush

The national IT system for the Quality and Outcomes Framework has been failing to work intermittently yesterday and today as GP practices attempt to submit their data at the end of the year.

The Quality and Management Analysis System (QMAS), built for NHS Connecting for Health by BT, has been intermittently unavailable.

One primary care trust (PCT) manager reported to EHI Primary Care: “If users do get in they are thrown out again after a very short time.”

Practices’ final achievement for the QoF in 2006/7 is calculated on 2 April when the practice is expected to sign in to QMAS, review its final achievement report and agree the ‘achievement declaration’. The declaration is a legally bind statement which is then sent via QMAS to PCTs for approval and payment.

Dr Gavin Jamie, a GP in Swindon, Wiltshire, reported the problems with QMAS on his own website that holds QoF results.

Yesterday he wrote: “There have been no problems for the last two years but today it has failed under load for much of the day. Nine thousand practices are trying to sign off their data. All this has snowballed for the simple reason that the more error reports that are sent, the more people press OK. Users are also managing to lock themselves out of the system.”

CfH was still reporting intermittent problems at 11am although by lunchtime today Dr Jamie told EHI Primary Care that he had now successfully got in to QMAS. He said a delay of 24 or 48 hours would not be likely to affect GP payments which are usually made towards the end of the month.

He added: “It’s a shock when it doesn’t work because QMAS has been so reliable in the past and we have done this twice before with no problems.”

A spokesperson for CfH told EHI Primary Care: “The QMAS service has performed consistently, meeting all service levels since it was installed in August 2004. It has paid £1.2 billion to PCTs for GP services over the past two financial years and has consistently met users’ satisfaction.

“At present, the end of year calculations are putting a strain on the volumes of transactions and this is causing an intermittent fault which is affecting users at some practices and PCTs.

“This is currently being investigated as a high priority by both NHS Connecting for Health and its service provider BT and a resolution is expected soon.

“The issue is not affecting all QMAS users – within the first 14 hours of the end of year reports being made available, some 1,436 practices had approved their end of year achievement report. This number is significantly up on the same period last year. In the first few hours of this morning (3 April) more than 500 practices had also approved their end of year achievement report.”