To:General practice:

General Practitioners

Practice Managers

Clinical commissioning groups:

Clinical Leads

Accountable Officers

NHS England:

Medical Directors

Commissioning Development Teams

Heads/Leads of Primary Care Commissioning

Heads/Leads of Public Health Commissioning

Heads/Leads of Operations

Heads/Leads of Patients and Information

Regional Directors

National Directors

Copy:Local Medical Committees

National Primary Medical Services Assurance and Quality Improvement Steering Group

Dear colleague,

PRIMARY MEDICAL SERVICES ASSURANCE FRAMEWORK:WEB INTERFACE

This letter provides information about:

  • the Primary Medical Services Assurance Framework, which is designed to help Area Teams work with GP practices to assure the quality of GP services and to support CCGs and GP practices in promoting continuous improvements in quality
  • the General Practice High Level Indicators and General Practice Outcomes Standardsthat are now live on the web interface – and how to register to use this interface
  • theannual declaration that practices will be asked to provide in the Autumn as part of the assurance framework.

Background

Last year, we developed a suite of policies and procedures for NHS England’s commissioning of pirmary care services. These are designed to support the objectives set out in ‘Securing Excellence in Commissioning in Primary Care’, namely to allow flexibility in service development to reflect local needs whilst ensuring fairness and consistency in approach across England.

These policies and procedures include a Primary Medical Services Assurance Framework that has five parts :

  1. Policy for assurance of primary medical services
  2. Guidance to support assurance management
  3. A practice profile
  4. An annual practice declaration
  5. A suite of General Practice High Level Indicators

We have also rolled out a suite of General Practice Outcome Standards, which were originally developed in London,to support quality improvement through peer review and benchmarking.

We have developed a related web interface ( which can be used by Area Teams and GP practices to assure themselvesthat GP services are being delivered to a high standard and to monitor improvements in quality and outcomes. It can also be used by CCGs in working with practices to promote quality improvement.

GP High Level Indicators and General Practice Outcome Standards

The web interface includes two sets of pre-analysed data:

  • data on the 38 GP High Level Indicators, which NHS England uses for assurance purposes
  • data on the 28 General Practice Outcome Standards for quality improvement.

The GP High Level Indicators were developed last year by a national clinical reference group with analytical support.

The General PracticeOutcome Standards were originally developed by NHS London in collaboration with Londonwide LMCs, as a bottom up approach to improving quality and outcomes. Over 70 organisations and 150 professionals contributed to their development.

Both these modules:

  • are structured to reflect the five domains of the NHS Outcomes Framework: reducing premature mortality, enhancing quality of life for people with long term conditions, providing effective recovery after acute illness or injury, enhancing patient experience, and assuring patient safety;
  • include a variety of analytical and reporting functionality for local use;
  • allow quality and outcomes to be measured at the level of practices, CCGs, and Area Teams and to be benchmarked against national data.

Both modules are designed to facilitate collaborative discussion between practices, CCGs and area teams and to prompt questions, both in relation to the quality of services that practices provide for patients and the impact on wider outcomes. We recognise that quality assurance and quality improvement cannot rely on data alone and require careful consideration of contextual factors. Some levels of variation will be natural. The data may, however, help to identify unwarranted levels of variation that require remedial action.

How to register

To get access to these data modules, please register by navigating to the link

If you have a GP practice ,CCG, Area Team or region which you would like your account linked to, enter the relevant organisation code or name when registering for an account. This will not preclude you from viewing information about any other practice.

You will then receive an automated email to complete your registration . From within the email, click the link to complete your registration. You will then be re-directed to the website where you will need to select and confirm a chosen password. Once completed, you will see a link to return to the login page. You should then enter your username (email address) and the password you have just chosen.

Annual practice declaration(ROCR approval applied for)

As part of the assurance framework, GP practices will be required to submit an electronic annual practice declaration, which has been aligned to Care Quality Commission (CQC) essential standards and contractual requirements(please refer to annex 3 of the policy to review the content).

The collection of the declaration for 2013/14 will commence in September 2013 and remain open for submission for six weeks. A senior partner and practice manager will be required to complete and sign off the declaration and the practice catchment area submission.

Area teams will be asked to co-ordinate and provide a list of the agreed senior partners and practice managers for each practice, including practice code, individual name, email addresses and authorisation level (i.e. able to complete and edit the e-declaration or sign off the final submission)

Yours sincerely

Ann Sutton

Director of NHS Commissioning (Corporate)

NHS England