UK's NICE publishes first menu of potential new indicators for the 2010/11 QOF

The UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has published the first menu of potential indicators for the 2010/11 Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) together with recommendations on indicators to be considered for retirement. NHS Employers, on behalf of the UK Health Departments will now consult the British Medical Association on which indicators should be introduced for the 2010/11 QOF.

Introduced in 2004, the QOF is a voluntary annual incentive scheme that rewards general practitioners practices in the UK for implementing systematic improvements in quality of care for patients. The QOF operates through a points system which rewards GPs for their performance in relation to groups of indicators. These payments range from those relating to clinical and health improvement topics such as coronary heart disease and hypertension to patient experience topics such as the length of consultations. The NICE's role is only concerned with the clinical and health improvement indicators. The agency took over the arrangements for managing the new process of developing indicators and reviewing the existing indicators in April 2009.

The menu of indicators published today was developed under a transitional process using the reports already published by the previous QOF expert panel - a consortium of academic bodies coordinated by the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre (NPCRDC) based at Manchester University. Their recommendations for new QOF indicators were subsequently prioritized by the new independent Primary Care QOF Indicator Advisory Committee during their meetings in June before being published on the NICE web site on August 10.