The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is a voluntary annual reward and incentive programme for all GP surgeries in England, detailing practice achievement results. It is not about performance management but resourcing and then rewarding good practice. As a consequence it acts as a proxy for prevalence data.
It should be noted that data recorded within QOF are originally designed to be used as payment system for GP’s. Therefore QOF prevalence is a rate that may not reflect prevalence rate published elsewhere or the underlying prevalence rate. These figures only account for diagnosed patients and there may be large number of undiagnosed patients at risk in general population who are not receiving treatment.
Crude prevalence data:
Methodology
CCG:
2012-13 onwards the HSCIC publish data by CCG. Before that, CCG data was obtained by aggregating the practice data within each CCG. Where possible, practices that have merged or it is clear that a practice population has been taken over by another practice, this has been included within the aggregation. However, it has not been possible to do this for all practice closures and this data has not been included in the aggregation. Practice populations used are derived from the PCSS for 2010/11.
CCG prevalences have not been calculated for 2009/10 as CCGs did not exist at that time.
Data for NHS North East Hampshire and Farnham CCG has been calculated for the part of the CCG within Surrey i.e. Farnham, and represents data for only 5 practices.
Local authority:
This has not been modelled for years after 2011-12 as the PAR database has not been available to public health.
The PAR database was used to determine the proportion of each practice population living in each local authority (Sept 2010 for 2010/11 and Aug 2011 for 2011/12). The QOF practice prevalence was then applied to the population within each local authority. The numbers for each local authority were summed and divided by the corresponding population for each local authority derived from the PAR database to give an aggregated local authority prevalence estimate.
The methodology of calculation of the local authority estimates for 2009/10 differs slightly. It calculates the proportion of the population of each practice within each local authority and then applies that proportion to the disease register.
See link for more detail :
http://www.qof.ic.nhs.uk/
Frequency: Financial Year
Note: This document has been edited for Surrey data at a GP and CCG level. For the full document, go to https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/quality-and-outcomes-framework-achievement-prevalence-and-exceptions-data/quality-and-outcomes-framework-qof-2016-17
