I am delighted to say that the QOF for 2016-17 is now online. There is no data for Scotland this year as this is no longer being used for payment in Scotland. It is apparently still being extracted and I will consider putting in a freedom of information request. We already have some idea from England about what happens to data after payment is stopped. Briefly things that are considered useful continue and things that are thought to be useless stop).
QOF has been in quite a stable state for the last few years so there is nothing much in the way of changes. This year there has been more reporting of the sub-register of heart failure for patients with a diagnosis of left ventricular systolic dysfunction. This has been a subregister for some years and is used for calculating the prevalence adjustment for the indicators relating to the prescribing of ACE inhibitors (or A2IIs) and β blockers. I have made this explicit this year.
The general trends continue with an increase in the prevalence of diabetes across the whole of the UK but a decrease in cardiovascular disease, which is generally encouraging.
There will definitely be data next year as the QOF is ongoing. What happens after that is not clear. However we are now three and a half months before the start of the 2018-19 year and there does not seem to be any big plan around so personally I would predict small changes only with bigger promises for later.
