English practices achieved 94.7% of available QOF points on average in 2010/11, according to figures from the NHS Information Centre.

This compares to 93.7% achievement in 2009/10.

Scores across clinical indicators, which account for 697 out of the total 1,000 QOF points, climbed from 95.9% to 96.8%.

Achievement among organisational indicators also rose by 1.1 percentage points, to 97.4%.

Patient experience indicator points rose from 71.5% to 72.6%, with additional services scores also increasing.

The number of practices achieving maximum points jumped from 80 to 105 in this time.

Average points earned by practices increased for every clinical area.

Among the largest increases were depression, which jumped 3.4 percentage points to 85.1%, and cardiovascular disease primary prevention indicators, in which scores rose by 2.5 percentage points to 93.7%.

Obesity indicators recorded the highest average score of 100.0%, the same as the previous year.

Figures show the prevalence of cardiovascular disease on practice registers doubled between 2009/10 and 2010/11, from 0.6% to 1.2%.

In 2010/11, negotiators had agreed to suspend the usual annual update to the framework until the following year due to the swine flu pandemic, meaning there were no changes at all to the QOF that year.

Last year, in 2009/10, QOF scores for England fell 1.7% to 93.7%, due largely to big falls in the patient experience domain. Clinical domains experienced a 1.9% drop in earnings.