This statement has appeared on the Primary Care Contracting site
An error has been identified within the QMAS system which calculates payments to GP contractors under QOF and which has resulted in GP practices being underpaid for achievement under the QOF additional services indicators since 2004/05. The Department of Health will provide PCTs with resources to make good these underpayments.
... and that is all we have. There is no detail of what the error is. The additional service domain contains Child Health Surveillance, Cervical Cytology and Contraception/Sexual Health. There is a prevalence adjustment here and I would guess that that is where the problem is.
It is worth noting that this seems to have purely been an underpayment and some practices could be due six years of back pay.
QMAS is used to calculate the QOF in England and Scotland although PCC only deals with England as far as I know.
A notice on QMAS says the system will be off for a couple of days from the 11th February. I have no idea if this is connected.
2 comments:
Details have now been published by the Department of Health and the details of payments are included. Still no word what the problem was though.
Closed source software is so handy for hiding first mistakes, and then who was responsible for making them, isn't it.
I'd like to know the person who found it, and hear the story of how it was picked up. Praise may be deserved.
Tony Collins of Computing Weekly (and his book Crash! ) might be interested, and could perhaps dig a little deeper. I wonder who wrote the code. ANd who checked it, And what else they have done and accepted.
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