All four countries' QOF data is now on line at the QOF Database. All of the data is also on the download page in both CSV/SQL format and also as a complete Microsoft Access database.

The publication of the Irish data was a little bit limited so you may notice that there is no palliative care data for Northern Ireland and the patient survey data is limited to the scoring range. Other than this the data is complete.

Wales joined England this year in not including all of the practice names and addresses so these may be a little out of date where practices have moved recently.

Scotland and England data now online 2008/9

I am delighted to be able to announce that the English and Scottish QOF data is now online. The Welsh and Northern Irish data was published by their departments of health today and I hope to have this online by Wednesday or Thursday. Downloads to follow at the end of the week but I will send another email when everything is on.

Results of the QOF seem to be roughly comparable to last year with the loss of points to practices coming from the survey results.

There are a couple of things to note in the data. Quite a lot of the Scottish data, particularly in mental health, has been held back due to small numbers causing a risk of confidentiality breach. Whilst this is right and proper it can be a little frustrating.

England did not release a full address lookup table this year (and later in the week it will become apparent that Wales has not either). I have used addresses for previous years and everything should work fine. Addresses may be a little out of date. If you work at a practice with incorrect details and have and "old style" NHS email address which features your practice code e.g. fred-blogs@gp-X99999.nhs.uk then you can correct this. If you corrected details last year these remain intact.