The Primary Care QOF Indicator Advisory Committee decided at its meeting in Manchester on Thursday to put indicators covering both these areas forward for development.
It also agreed to recommend to GPC and NHS Employers that the new HbA1c units in all relevant indicators from April 2010. Indicators should be amended to include both the percentage threshold currently included and its equivalent in the new mmol/mol units, it said.
The committee said it would examine the issue of whether sets of overlapping indicators in areas such as cardiovascular disease should be 'unbundled' or bunched together. It will consider how the QOF should develop in this regard and develop a general principle on whether indicators should be brought together to simply the framework or separated out.
The committee rejected a set of proposed changes to current targets. It decided against moving the cholesterol target in CHD8 from 5mmol/l to 4mmol/l, but it agreed to assess any changes in the evidence base at later meetings.
In addition, it ruled out any immediate changes to all the smoking indicators, as well as AF3 and Asthma 8 and Cancer 3 indicators. It was agreed to consider further review of these at the committee's June meeting.
June's meeting would also consider a set of proposed new indicators which required further development, the committee said. These included a new indicator for depression, an indicator on assessing patients for COPD and technical changes to the coding of mental health indictators.
A further group of indicators were considered as needing further development, or assessment of evidence, before being re-considered by the committee. Included in this were changes to the obesity indicators, the chronic kidney disease indicators and the targets in the HbA1c indicators
Other proposed indicators were rejected as being unsuitable for further discussion. These included changes to the palliative care indicator and new indicators on undernourishment and patient education in diabetes patients, secondary prevention in osteoporosis falls prevention.
The committee meets again in June 2010. Details of the minutes of the meeting will be posted on the NICE website, where comments on current and proposed QOF indicators can be made.
