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Quality premium to be based on five to ten measures from NHS Outcomes Framework

The quality premium payments for CCGs are  likely to be based on a set of five to 10 measures drawn from the NHS Outcomes Framework, said a senior figure from the NHS Commissioning Board.

The targets, for which CCGs are understood to be awarded up to £5 per head of population quality premium, an average of £1.25 million per CCG, are to be called ‘CCG outcome measures’ and will form part of the new Commissioning Outcomes Framework.

CCGs will then be free to distribute these payments to GP practices in their area.

The proposals, if approved by the NHS Commissioning Board next week, would become secondary legislation in January next year and dictate the quality premium targets for 2013/14, said Alison Westmacott, strategic programme lead for the NHS Commissioning Board.

Speaking at yesterday’s NHS Clinical Commissioners event in Bournemouth, Ms Westmacott said: ‘I think it’s safe to say the [Government’s] mandate [to the NHS Commissioning Board, published last week] has set the NHS Commissioning Board the targets of what has to be delivered in the NHS Outcomes Framework, so the quality measures are likely, one would think, to be aligned to those five domains.’

She said the feedback from CCGs was ‘small number equals high impact’ adding that she was looking at ‘eight…so maximum 10, but think looking at five to eight probably.’

She said that some parts of the NHS Outcomes Framework were too big to be measured at a CCG level prompting the need for the a smaller list of outcome measures against which CCGs will be tested in order to receive the quality premium.

According to Ms Westmacott the measures chosen will be based on those where data is already available and collated so practices would not have to commit extra resource to collecting new data.