Northern Ireland Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) Information 2014/15

Date published: 30 October 2015

This is the 11th year of operation of the quality and outcomes framework (QOF), which is a system to remunerate general practices for providing good quality care to their patients, and to help fund work to further improve the quality of health care delivered. It is a fundamental part of the general medical services (GMS) contract, which was introduced on 1 April 2004.

The QOF measures achievement against a range of evidence-based indicators, with points and payments awarded according to the level of achievement. The framework has four main components:

• clinical Indicators
• public health indicators (including additional services)
• patient experience
• quality and productivity indicators

Key Points

• The average achievement in Northern Ireland was 642.1 of the 649 points available (98.9%). Achievement was consistently high throughout Northern Ireland, with the average achievement ranging from 98.6% in Southern local commissioning group (LCG) and Belfast LCG, to 99.3% in Northern LCG.
• Of the clinical registers collected for QOF that measure disease prevalence, prevalence was highest for hypertension (13.2%) and lowest for heart failure due to left ventricular dysfunction (0.2%).
• The average points achieved in the main domains were 465.1 points (99.0%) for clinical, 17.8 points (99.1%) for patient experience, 41.7 points (97.0%) for public health, 99.8 (99.8%) for quality and productivity and 17.6 points (97.7%) for additional services.
• Achievement in the rheumatoid arthritis clinical area (introduced in 2013/14) remains high at 99.5%. There were no new clinical areas introduced in 2014/15.