TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

QOF is a vital component of Primary Care and is designed to reward practices financially for delivering high-quality care. The QOF contract makes up a substantial part of the practice income, making it crucial for practices to perform well against a range of indicators. 

 

Patients with multiple long-term conditions often appear on several care registers, leading to multiple outstanding QOF indicators. Identifying and prioritising these patients ensures that critical health issues are addressed promptly, resulting in better overall health outcomes. This proactive approach helps manage chronic conditions more effectively, reducing the risk of complications and hospital admissions.

 

By focusing on patients with multiple outstanding indicators, practices can maximise their QOF points, directly impacting their income. Each indicator met contributes to the overall score, translating into financial incentives. Therefore, prioritising these patients not only improves patient care but also enhances the financial health of the practice.

 

Within Ardens Manager, a series of reports are available to identify patients with multiple QOF indicators outstanding. With just a click, you can easily view these patients and start working on improving patient care while maximising available income.

 

Why do patients have multiple indicators outstanding?

There are several reasons why a patient might have one or more QOF indicators outstanding:

  • Patient Engagement: Some patients do not engage with their annual reviews or respond to requests for up-to-date information. While practices should actively try to get these patients involved, sometimes it is just not possible. In such cases, most indicators allow for a 'personal care adjustment' to remove them from the outstanding list.
     
  • Coding and Data Entry: Often, the work is done, the patient is reviewed, and the data is collected, but it's not coded correctly. This could be due to using the wrong codes or not coding the work at all. By reviewing patient records, you can identify why an indicator is outstanding and correct it. This might involve adding a code for work that was already done or inviting the patient back to complete any missed elements. Please refer to the Ardens Clinical data quality searches in your clinical system to support you with this.


  • Training Needs: Sometimes, the issue is a lack of knowledge or resources among the staff responsible for recording the work. Ensuring that everyone involved in this process is properly trained can help maximise the practice's income by making sure all work is accurately recorded.

 

By understanding these common issues, practices can take steps to address them, ensuring that all indicators are met, and patient care is optimised.

 

How to utilise the Work Prioritisation reports 

Our full range of reports for multiple outstanding indicators can be found within the QOF Dashboard under the General tab. 



  • Set Priorities Based on Practice Goals: The reports are split into different categories to help you prioritise the work based on your practice's capacity and goals. For example, you might want to start with patients who have the highest number of indicators outstanding. This way, you can ensure their care needs are met and maximise your income for those categories. 

 

  • Assign Tasks to Teams: You can assign specific lists to different clinicians or teams. For instance, give a list with fewer outstanding indicators to a team that can handle it alongside their usual work. This way, patient care and income maximisation become a whole-practice effort, not just limited to clinicians.

 

  • Filter Data: The Ardens Manager dashboards allow you to further filter data. For example, you can filter your patient list to focus on those who smoke and assign this list to an administrator. This frees up clinicians to focus on other important tasks, like working on indicators where the practice have not yet met the minimum threshold. 

 

  • Export Data: You can export the data into different formats, which allows you to send bulk SMS messages to collect missing data. Or you can import the list back into your clinical system to complete required actions. This helps streamline the process and ensures you have all the necessary information to meet QOF indicators.


How to access the Work Prioritisation reports


1. Log in to Ardens Manager. From the Home Page of Ardens Manager select the Contracts icon highlighted below. Navigate to the right of the menu and select QOF 2024-25. This will display your QOF Dashboard. 



2. Your QOF Dashboard is sectioned by the indicators of the contract. Navigate to the General tab.



3. From this screen, navigate down to the section titled “Work Prioritisation”. Within this section you will find the series of reports highlighting patients with various multiple indicators outstanding (i.e. 10 or more indicators, 8-9 indicators, etc). 



4. You can now start to work on your reports. Selecting the View option allows you easy access to the patient list.  In the example below we will use ‘a. 10 or more indicators outstanding’.



Select ‘Patients’ tab, where your patient list will be displayed. Click on the icon to the left of the patient’s name to copy their NHS Number. Paste this into your clinical system to review the patient record and action as appropriate. 



5. To access a more specific data set, select ‘Demographics’ to the right of the screen. This will show the data filtered based on different factors such as age, gender, conditions, etc. 



Your patient list can also be filtered even further to help you prioritise the work by looking at specific cohorts of patients first. Select the filter icon above the patient list and add filter criteria as required. Select ‘Apply’ to display the filtered list. The ‘Demographics’ filter on the right will also update accordingly to your additional filtered data.

 


 

Additional Information

This dashboard is available to National Contract Subscribers and allows organisations to visualise QOF performance in terms of points value and threshold achievements.

 

Please note that this dashboard only supports automatic uploads, so ensure that you are active for ‘automatic uploads’. If you are not active for this function, you can request setup by clicking on ‘Request Setup’ on the Ardens Manager homepage. 

 

 


If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact the Ardens Manager Support Team on: [email protected]