GP indicators added to NHS Choices

Forty indicators about GP practice standards and performance have been added to the NHS Choices Accountability Tool.

The indicators are designed to give people a comprehensive view of practice performance across a range of quality and clinical indicators and cover things such as: early diagnosis of cancer; cervical smears; asthma diagnosis; and flu vaccination levels.

Data about GP, hospital and clinical commissioning croup outcomes as well as local authority health information has been brought together in the new easily-navigable tool on the NHS Choices website.

Most of the 201 datasets were previously available via Choices, except for the 40 GP indicators which were used by the NHS to assess variation among practices.

These indicators were previously available through the Health and Social Care Information Centre and GP Patient Survey websites, but only available in navigable format to GPs through a password-protected portal.

Dr Mike Bewick, a GP and deputy medical director at NHS England, said making this data accessible and navigable helps patients understand how well their services are performing in the areas that matter to them most.

“This is a big step forward in transparency which will allow patients to take a full and active part in conversations about investment and improvement of their services, holding their providers and commissioners to account,” he said.

“This is part of our concerted efforts to have greater transparency in all NHS work: for the first time, in a co-ordinated way, patients and carers can access information more readily and feedback their views.”

Dr Bewick said NHS England is working in partnership with all parts of the NHS and with clinical professional groups to present even more data for patients and the public in a format that is meaningful to them.

“We anticipate that, eventually, all of data collected across the NHS will be available to patients in the future. This is the first step in that process,” he said.

The addition of the GP indicators was going to be part of the relaunch of NHS Choices planned for November; however a report to the Informatics Services Commissioning Group in November say this launch has been put back to January 2014.

The NHS Choices replacement service was going to be called the ‘integrated customer service platform’, but is now referred to as the ‘health and social care digital service.

“Development of the beta products is progressing well and they will be launched from January. Launch of the products will not occur in November as originally anticipated due to unexpected delays in procuring the platform,” a report to the board says.