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Research article:

Withdrawing Performance Indicators: Retrospective Analysis of General Practice Performance Under the UKs Quality and Outcomes Framework

Reference:

Kontopantelis, Evangelos; Springate, David; Reeves, David; Ashcroft, Darren; Valderas, Jose M; Doran, Tim(2014) Withdrawing Performance Indicators: Retrospective Analysis of General Practice Performance Under the UKs Quality and Outcomes Framework. British Medical Journal, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g330

Link to fulltext article
Abstract
Objectives: To investigate the effect of withdrawing incentives on recorded quality of care, in the context of the UK Quality and Outcomes Framework pay-for-performance scheme. Design: Retrospective longitudinal study. Setting: Data for 644 general practices, from 2004/5 to 2011/12, extracted from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink. Participants: All patients registered with any of the practices over the study period, 13,772,992 in total. Intervention: The removal of financial incentives for aspects of care for patients with asthma, coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and psychosis. Main outcome measures: Performance on eight clinical quality indicators withdrawn from a national incentive scheme: influenza immunisation (asthma) and lithium therapy monitoring (psychosis), removed in April 2006; blood pressure monitoring (coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke), cholesterol level monitoring (coronary heart disease, diabetes) and blood glucose monitoring (diabetes), removed in April 2011. Multilevel mixed effects multiple linear regression models were used to quantify the effect of incentive withdrawal. Results: Mean levels of performance were generally stable after the removal of the incentives, both short- and long-term. For the two indicators removed in April 2006/7, levels in 2011/12 were very close to 2005/6 levels, although a small but statistically significant drop was estimated for influenza immunisation. For five of the six indicators withdrawn in from April 2011/12, there was no significant impact on performance in that year following removal and differences between predicted and observed scores were small. Performance on related outcome indicators retained in the scheme (e.g. blood pressure control) was generally unaffected. Conclusions: Following the removal of incentives, levels of performance across a range of clinical activities generally remained stable. This indicates that health benefits from incentive schemes can potentially be increased by periodically replacing existing indicators with new indicators relating to alternative aspects of care. However, most of the aspects of care we investigated remained indirectly incentivised and further work is required to assess the generalisability of the findings when incentives are fully withdrawn.
Author for correspondence
Evangelos Kontopantelis
Email for correspondence
e.kontopantelis@manchester.ac.uk

Code list: serum_Creatine_testing

12 codes in list

Code Coding system Description Entity type List name
44J3.00 Read Serum creatinine test serum_Creatine_testing
44J3000 Read Serum creatinine abnormal test serum_Creatine_testing
44J3100 Read Serum creatinine low test serum_Creatine_testing
44J3200 Read Serum creatinine normal test serum_Creatine_testing
44J3300 Read Serum creatinine raised test serum_Creatine_testing
44J3z00 Read Serum creatinine NOS test serum_Creatine_testing
44JC.00 Read Corrected plasma creatinine level test serum_Creatine_testing
44JD.00 Read Corrected serum creatinine level test serum_Creatine_testing
44JF.00 Read Plasma creatinine level test serum_Creatine_testing
451E.00 Read GFR calculated abbreviated MDRD test serum_Creatine_testing
451F.00 Read Glomerular filtration rate test serum_Creatine_testing
451G.00 Read GFR calculated abbreviated MDRD adj for African Americ orign test serum_Creatine_testing

1 comment has been posted.

Jan. 27, 2014, 6:37 a.m. - David Springate

QOF indicator DM 14

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