Primary care information

SPIRE - Scottish Primary Care Information Resource

SPIRE is a service that will allow small amounts of information from GP practice records to be used to help doctors' surgeries, NHSScotland and the Scottish Government to improve care and plan services, and to help researchers to learn more from patient information held at GP practices. Further information is available from the SPIRE website.

Practice team information (PTI)

As of September 2013, Practice Team Information (PTI) data are no longer collected by ISD. The replacement SPIRE system referred to above will collect more detailed data from a greater number of practices.

PTI was a collection of 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 covered 60 practices (around 6% 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?

PTI statistics 2012/13 are available from ISD.

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 provides basic information on the individual indicators included within the QOF.

QOF data is used for public health purposes to estimate prevalence and QOF data is published routinely by ISD.  For interpretative advice for these statistics see prevalence data in the QOF explained on the ISD website.

The general practice contract is currently under negotiation in Scotland and 2015/16 will be the final year of the QOF in its existing form. QOF data will be collected in some form during the 2016/17 transitional year but it is unlikely that it will be available after that. In future data from primary care will be available through the SPIRE project.