Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) payments and (b) incentives are made to General practitioners in respect of removing patients from waiting lists who have failed to respond to communications.

The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is an optional pay-for-performance scheme that financially rewards practices for the quality of care they provide to their patients. It has been developed in accordance with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines and is underpinned by a robust evidence base.

Where a patient does not respond to offers of care, a Personalised Care Adjustment can be applied that will remove that patient from an indicator denominator, ensuring the practice is not financially penalised. This ensures practices do not lose out financially when a patient on the disease register does not receive the recommended care. This also ensures there is no incentive to remove a patient from the list to improve QOF performance scores.

Healthcare providers should undertake regular reviews of their waiting list to ensure all patient records are accurate, that patients are on the best pathway to meet their needs, and that they still want their appointments, and we refer to this as waiting list “validation”. This is a clinically supported process and forms a long-standing part of trusts’ routine management of their waiting lists.