1. © Imperial College LondonPage 1 Non-Clinical Hot Topics in General Practice Professor Azeem Majeed Department of Primary Care & Social Medicine

2. © Imperial College LondonPage 2 Non-clinical hot topics Many ‘hot’ topics You won’t be able to know about all of them and don’t need to know many of them in detail More important to have good basic clinical skills and clinical knowledge Knowledge in non-clinical areas can help separate out candidates

3. © Imperial College LondonPage 3 Some current hot topics Connecting for Health Practice based commissioning Quality & Outcomes Framework (QOF) Clinical coding and data entry GP Appraisal & revalidation Health policy Modernising medical careers Medical statistics Evidence based medicine Clinical epidemiology Systematic reviews

4. © Imperial College LondonPage 4 Connecting for Health NHS Connecting for Health is delivering the National Programme for IT Aims to connect over 30,000 GPs in England to almost 300 hospitals and give patients access to their personal health and care information http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/ http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/jargonbuster

5. © Imperial College LondonPage 5 Practice based commissioning (PBC) PBC is about engaging practices and other primary care professionals in the commissioning of services Aims to give clinicians greater freedoms and flexibilities to tailor services to the needs of the local community All practices receive an indicative budget covering an agreed scope of services http://www.dh.gov.uk

6. © Imperial College LondonPage 6 Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) An example of a ‘pay for performance’ scheme Contains a number of organisation and clinical domains 1050 points available Up to 25% of GP income may come from QOF content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/14/1448

7. © Imperial College LondonPage 7 Clinical coding Clinical data in general practice is coded using ‘Read codes’. Important to understand the difference between free text and Read codes http://www.nasgp.org.uk/handbook/33.htm

8. © Imperial College LondonPage 8 GP Appraisal Appraisal aims to give GPs annual feedback on their past performance, to chart continuing progress and identify development needs The content of appraisal is based on the General Medical Council's core headings set out in the Good Medical Practice document Standardised documentation aims to ensure that information from a variety of NHS employers is recorded and expressed consistently Appraisal will provide a regular, structured system for recording progress towards revalidation and identifying development needs. The GMC state that participation in annual appraisals is normally enough to achieve revalidation http://www.dh.gov.uk

9. © Imperial College LondonPage 9 EBM, Statistics, Epidemiology Understand core terms such as sensitivity, specificity, NNT, relative and absolute risk, confidence intervals, p-values Can be difficult for some clinicians Many websites in these areas http://www.cebm.net/ http://www.med.ualberta.ca/ebm/define.htm