Family doctors in Bradford are delivering better services than ever, latest figures reveal.

Data published by The Information Centre For Health And Social Care shows an overall increase in the quality of services during 2005-2006, the second year of the Quality and Outcomes Framework.

QOF is the reward and incentive programme introduced as part of the GP contract in 2004. The voluntary process awards surgeries points for specific aspects of clinical care, how well the practice is organised, the patient experience and the extra services offered, such as child health and maternity services.

The more points a practice achieves and the more services they provide, the more money they earn, although the final sum paid to practices is also adjusted to take account of their workload and the relative health of patients in their area.

The system also allows patients to find out how well their GP's surgery is performing by visiting the website www.ic.nhs.uk.

Nationally, on average GP practices achieved 96 per cent (1,011) of the available 1,050 points during 2005-2006.

Airedale Primary Care Trust's 16 GP practices achieved an average QOF total of 1,023 or 97.5 per cent of the total QOF points available. This is an improvement from last year when the average total was 995.7 or 94.8 per cent.

In North Bradford PCT, 11 practices achieved an average of 993.4 points, 94.6 per cent of the total available, an improvement from 64.1 per cent last year.

Bradford City Teaching PCT's 42 GP practices averaged 909.8 points, 86.6 per cent of the total points available, up from 73.7 per cent and Bradford South and West PCT's 22 practices averaged 1,016.4 points, 96.8 per cent of the total points available and up from 92.3 per cent last year.

A spokesperson for the Bradford and Airedale PCTs said: "All the Bradford and Airedale PCTs' GP practices have made significant progress in carrying out the requirements of the QOF.

"This has been achieved through the hard work of the GPs and their staff, and with direct support from the PCTs providing extra GP, nursing, administrative and IT resources to practices.

"The QOF has helped the PCTs and its GPs to improve patient care by focusing on key areas. We are particularly pleased that the improvement in clinical indicators continues.

"In assessing the QOF it is important to recognise the many challenges faced by some of our practices, particularly in the inner city area where there are high levels of deprivation and ill health, in delivering modern day primary care.

"Many of these issues are common to other PCTs with average scores similar to ours.

"However, it is very encouraging that Bradford City Teaching PCT's GPs have increased their average score from 749 last year to 910 this year.

"The QOF has given us an important marker of quality which, with the introduction of robust practice-based action plans, should allow every practice to continue to provide quality patient care.

"We are also confident that as our major premises scheme to improve primary care moves ahead it will allow practices to develop their services and contribute to raising standards of patient care."

e-mail: claire.lomax@bradford.newsquest.co.uk

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