Intended for healthcare professionals

Views & Reviews From the Frontline

Kill the QOF

BMJ 2013; 346 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f1498 (Published 06 March 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f1498
  1. Des Spence, general practitioner, Glasgow
  1. destwo{at}yahoo.co.uk

We are entering the 10th year of the world’s largest public health experiment in evidenced based medicine—the target driven QOF (Quality and Outcomes Framework). It has cost £10bn in direct payments to general practitioners,1 but this is just the tip of an expensive iceberg. Hidden are the appointments systems overloaded with arbitrary “reviews” and huge increases in investigations and prescribing. Once highly functional general practice computing systems are now clogged with constant pop-up reminders to enter data that are meaningless, useless, and frankly often erroneous. …

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