TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Some QOF indicators have a time limitation for achievement. If this window is missed there is nothing that can be done to gain the QOF points for those patients.
These indicators include:
- Asthma (AST012) – Newly diagnosed on or after 1st April 2025 with an objective test between 3 months before or 3 months after diagnosis
- Diabetes (DM014) - Structured education referral within 9 months of diagnosis.
- Heart Failure (HF008) - Echo or specialist assessment to confirm a diagnosis in the 6 months before diagnosis (if diagnosis on or after 1 April 2023) OR within 6 months of registration (If newly registered with a diagnosis on or after 1 April 2023 but no record of an echocardiogram or a specialist assessment at the date of registration).
Ardens Clinical resources include a comprehensive suite of QOF Time Sensitive Searches/Reports in both EMIS web and SystmOne to support practices to improve data quality and ensure QOF points are achieved within the required timescales. The Ardens Manager platform can be used to monitor those patients.
Please see the enclosed Support Articles to help support you with this:
How to Access the Reports
You can access the Time Sensitive information via the QOF 2025/26 Dashboard.
Select the Contracts icon, followed by the QOF 2025/26 contract.
Using Diabetes Structured Education (DM014) as an example, select the Diabetes (DM) Tab and scroll down to the Time Sensitive section.
How to use the Reports
These searches help you identify patients who still have time remaining for a review. You'll find filtered searches for patients whose review windows are expiring soon, as well as those with longer timeframes -enabling you to prioritise and plan your workload effectively.
Additionally, a dedicated report highlights patients whose review window have already expired. This gives you the opportunity to:
- Review their records to determine whether the work was genuinely missed.
- Identify cases where the work was completed but not coded correctly.
- Add any missing code retrospectively – ensuring they are dated within the appropriate timeframe.
Example:
While reviewing a patient’s record, you may find a letter from the Diabetes Structured Education team confirming the patient was referred to and attended a Structured Education programme. If this hasn’t been coded, you can now add the relevant code, backdated to the event, allowing the patient to meet the indicator.
If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact the Ardens Manager Support Team on: support-manager@ardens.org.uk