Benchmarking primary care 2009

August 2009

Benchmarking survey of primary care 2009

Please note: these documents are available to subscribers only. All PCTs and SHAs in England are subscribers. Individuals in those organisations still need to register for access. See registration help for further details.

Final report (PowerPoint)

• Report 1 - PCT level data
• Report 2 - SHA level data 

Briefings (PDF)

• Exploring the benchmarking data 2009
• Benchmarking access to primary medical services
• Monitoring contracts for primary medical services
• Enhanced services as a tool for innovation in primary care
• Benchmarking primary medical services: finance
• Standards drive quality in primary care

Background

These reports and briefing documents are the results of a survey of PCTs conducted by NHS PCC and NHS Benchmarking Network in 2008/09 and published in July 2009.

The survey was the most comprehensive of its kind ever undertaken in primary care. It covered 500 data points or around five times the number covered by previous surveys. In all, 91 PCTs took part, representing more than half of the UK population.

Individual PCTs are not identified in the final report, but the data allows PCTs to view their own performance for the first time against a set of national benchmarks.

It is hoped that the survey provides a useful tool for PCTs to see where there are variations in provision and performance, to identify outliers and to deal with any issues and problems on their patch.

NHS PCC and NHS Benchmarking Network were delighted with the scale of the response and are grateful to colleagues who collected, collated and checked the huge volumes of data concerned.

Since this was the first time the survey had been undertaken, there are two caveats: one is that because not all respondents were able to provide data for every one of the 500 metrics, partial responses were allowed. The other is that some SHA regions are better represented than others, which means that comparisons between regions should be treated with caution.

Note also that as data collection started in late 2008, the most recent validated data available was for the year 2007/08.

If the response from PCTs justifies a repeat of the exercise, the aim is to increase the coverage of the survey and the completeness of data collection still further in future.

If you have questions about the 2008/09 survey or wish to take part in future benchmarking programmes, please contact elizabeth.stopp@pcc.nhs.uk.

Feedback

After reading the reports, help us to improve the survey in future by completing a brief evaluation questionnaire.