NHS England Review of the NHS Quality and Outcomes Framework Suggests Need for Change

Launched in 2004, the National Health Service (NHS) Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is one of the world’s longest-running and most extensive pay-for-performance reimbursement mechanisms. As part of the 2017–18 contract negotiations with the General Practitioners Committee of the British Medical Association, a review was agreed upon and included in a report titled Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View. The report states that while the QOF’s impact on patient outcomes has been limited, there have been many gains in the organization of long-term care management and the development of the data infrastructure across primary care. The review identifies ways in which the QOF program needs to evolve to provide more holistic patient-centered care to meet the needs of increasingly complex patients and primary care physicians going forward.