Overview of Primary Care Information

Practice team information (PTI)

The Practice Team Information (PTI) programme collects information from a sample of Scottish general practices on contacts (face-to-face consultations in a surgery or the patient's home) between patients and any member of the Practice Team (general practitioners, practice nurses, district nurses and health visitors). It replaced the Continuous Morbidity Recording (CMR) scheme that previously collected data on General Practitioner (GP) contacts only.   The scheme currently covers 47 practices (around 5% of the Scottish population).

See What is PTI information? on the ISD website.

See also PTI uses and limitations and How is PTI data collected?

Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF)

The Quality & Outcomes Framework (QOF) represents one of the main sources of potential income for general practices across the UK. It rewards practices for providing good quality care to their patients and can help to fund work to support further improvements to the quality of health care delivered. It is a fundamental part of the new General Medical Services (GMS) contract, introduced on 1st April 2004. The core philosophy underpinning the QOF is that incentives are the best method of resourcing work, driving up standards, and recognising practices' achievements.

The QOF measures achievement against a range of evidence-based indicators, with points and payments awarded according to the level of achievement. It is a voluntary part of the new GMS contract; general practices can aspire to achieve all, part, or none of the points available in QOF (although to date, most practices with a GMS contract have participated fully).

This List of indicators (90 KB) Excel file icon provides basic information on the individual indicators included within the QOF.

For Public Health purposes, see Prevalence data in the QOF explained on the ISD website.