Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 24 March 2016 to Question 32057, on Epilepsy Death, for what reasons his Department made the decision to retire quality and outcomes framework indicators EP002 and EP003 in 2014.

Senior NHS England clinicians and representatives of the British Medical Association reviewed and agreed all the proposed changes to the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) taking into account the views of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and Public Health England.

The removal of QOF indicators will not mean that general practitioners (GPs) will no longer tackle important health issues, rather, the aim is that reducing QOF will help free up time to enable GPs to spend more time on providing more proactive coordinated and individual care for their patients, based on their clinical judgement. The reduction in the number of QOF indicators was intended to reduce bureaucracy, unnecessary patient testing and unnecessary frequency of patient recall and recording.