USING SPICE TO HELP MEET CONTRACT CRITERIA

By The College
Contact the author by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

Practices that have been using the SPICEpc criteria sets will be well placed to meet the clinical quality markers in the new GP contract. All of the disease areas in the contract (except Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)) are included in the existing criteria sets as are virtually all of the specific indicators. These can be accessed using the current GPASS care management screens or CS (formerly CDSS).

In response to the contract, the criteria sets have been completely revised and the care management screens have been updated to highlight contract criteria. The first four corresponding care management screens for CHD, Hypertension, Asthma and Diabetes will be released with GPASS version 5.4 in the next few weeks, with the remainder following with GPASS 5.5. Version 5.5 will include an all new COPD criteria set and a modified Mental Health set.

Practices will be able to use these screens and criteria sets to assess their performance and set their targets for the contract.

The outputs from the SPICEpc Reports have also been modified to produce the information required to meet the data entry and analysis requirements of the contract. The 250 practices who responded to the last SPICEpc data extraction from the Primary Care Clinical Informatics Unit (PCCIU) in Aberdeen, have already received a detailed analysis of their performance and an estimate of the contract points they will receive. PCCIU have agreed to carry out analyses for those practices who did not respond to the recent invitation to submit data although the figures will not be included in the national reference statistics.

Practices that have not been using SPICEpc via CMS or CS need not despair since all Read coded data will be retrieved and analysed. There is no need to worry about Contract codes if CMS is being used since the codes will be attached automatically.

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.