Announcement of methodological changes to Quality and Outcomes Framework

The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) publication includes data on personalised care adjustments (PCAs). PCAs capture reasons for patients’ legitimate exception from an indicator’s denominator (for example, where a patient is contraindicated for the relevant treatment, or where a patient has declined the treatment). PCA data are included at all levels of aggregation in the QOF publication. Breakdowns by specific PCA reason have been included in the release but are subject to suppression in order to manage disclosure control.

The practice level PCA files (PRACTICE_PCA_REGION_YYYY.csv), which provide breakdowns by individual PCA reason, will no longer be included in the publication. These files will be removed owing to the level of suppression that is required; in order for the disclosure control applied to these files to remain effective, tertiary suppression to the other summary files (which have a high level of usage) would negatively affect the utility of the release as a whole.

The first publication to be affected by this change will be the August 2024 release, which will cover the period April 2023 – March 2024.

The impact of the above changes on the QOF publication series is expected to be a loss of detail in respect of the relative contribution of specific PCAs to indicators’ PCA rates. The total count and rate of PCAs will still be available by indicator at GP practice level.

Questions and feedback on the publication are welcomed and should be sent to [email protected], or alternatively call 0300 303 5678.