King's Fund launches primary care inquiry

The King’s Fund has launched an 18-month inquiry into primary care in England that will aim to produce a set of measures to assess the quality of care provided by different GP practices.

The King’s Fund said there was “remarkably little information” currently available on the core activities of GPs, such as referral, prescribing and diagnosis, and that despite the introduction of the Quality and Outcomes Framework most work on quality was directed at secondary care.

The King’s Fund is to commission ten research projects and five reports from stakeholders to inform its work.

The inquiry panel will be chaired by Niall Dickson, chief executive of the King’s Fund, and include representatives from the Royal College of GPs and the NHS Alliance. Its final report will be published in September 2010 and conclude with a set of quality measures.

Dickson said: “Our ambition is to help GPs and others judge the quality of what is being provided by creating a range of measures that demonstrate what high-quality patient care looks like. We hope that in turn this will be used to help drive up standards.”

RCGP chairman Professor Steve Field, a member of the expert panel, said: “All our patients have a right to good quality care, whatever their postcodes or personal circumstances, and GPs work exceptionally hard to ensure this happens.

"However, there are certain parts of the country where we know that there are inconsistencies and provision can be patchy. The reasons for this are varied and complex and that’s why we welcome this independent review as an opportunity for primary care clinicians to lead and influence the quality debate.

"It will also enable us to better demonstrate good practice and to show that the vast majority of GPs are providing good and excellent care.”

The ten research projects will include the management of long term conditions, access to care and patient engagement and involvement. The five discussion papers will look at the organisational quality of general practice and the commissioning of GP services.

Link: Inquiry into the Quality of General Practice in England