Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF)

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

• 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.

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.

The open data file, and information at higher aggregations including the calculation and caveats used to create this report are available on the Quality Outcomes Framework pages.