Reviewing automatically extracted data through GPES

Every month, quarter, or year, data is automatically extracted from Practice systems to support payment mechanisms for QOF and enhanced services. Sometimes when reviewing the figures in CQRS it may be helpful to go back to the indicator and understand why patients are or aren't appearing.

EMIS Web has a module called the Enquiry Manager. This can be found under Reporting on the EMIS ball, or on the tab next to Population Reporting.

When accessing Enquiry Manager, the initial view will appear blank. Look down to the bottom left corner; there are usually 3 sections of (your Practice name), 'QMAS', 'QSurveillance'. Below this will be a globe icon which is GPES. Whilst it can be clicked on, it is also possible to drag the bar up at the top of the section (see red arrow below) to make GPES more visible.         

    

QMAS (Quality Management Automated System) is the predecessor to CQRS which facilitated extraction of QOF data. It still works and may be more useful when tracking percentage achievement which will be covered later in this article. 

QSurveillance is a large summary dataset used for high level analysis. No patient data (even anonymised) is extracted. It is possible to view monthly and even weekly reports, although in isolation most Practices will probably not find the data very meaningful. 

GPES (General Practice Extraction Service) is the current mechanism for extracting data from GP Practice systems which is then reported in CQRS.

Clicking on GPES in the bottom left corner will load a new screen which appears mostly empty. There is a tree structure on the left hand side with expandable years with monthly folders.

Select the folder representing last month. Often the current month (in this case August 2022) will not have many GPES reports visible as data is often extracted in the middle or at the end of the month. Folders denoting a previous month will show a full set of extracted services. 

Being just after the end of year, April's folder will contain more extracts than other folders.

Below is a snapshot of some of the extracts found in a folder. There are enhanced services; population cohorts such as learning disability and COVID-19 at risk; interim QOF; NCD (IIF).

            

Single left click to highlight an extract, then press View in Search Manager on the ribbon. EMIS Web will jump back to the Population Reporting module but with a new section in the list in the bottom left corner.

               

For whichever extract you view, indicators are prefixed with a code which matches what is found on CQRS. EMIS (and Primary Care IT) use the convention that denominator populations for indicators are enclosed in square brackets.
The figures extracted will show alongside a percentage achievement, and much like normal Population Reporting searches it is possible to see which patients are Included or Excluded, and use Check Patient to work out why the patient appears in the list.

When viewing QOF extracts, GPES searches do not show points achievement which can be helpful. A workaround is to schedule a QMAS report - If nothing has been configured, consider configuring a schedule (green + icon on the ribbon) to produce an interim report. Many schedules can be configured, so the Practice may wish to set reports to run on the first day of each month. In the example to the right, the baseline date of 01/10/2022 would produce an interim report for 6 months through the year.

Once the QMAS report has been run it will appear in a 'Completed' folder. Pressing View in Search Manager will jump back to Population Reporting and produce a view very similar to the normal QOF section, and it will display a column for Points achieved.

For vaccination enhanced services extracted for CQRS, we have a suite of searches which can help to identify missed opportunities for payment. If you are trying to compare with the GPES extract, it will be too late to address the issue in EMIS Web, but the Missed Activity searches will highlight patients who were not counted, often due to a coding error.

A longstanding query with NHS issued business rules is that they only extract data relating to currently registered patients, or those who were registered at the period end date but deregistered before the extraction took place. EMIS Web manages this using relative run dates, which allows it to treat anybody who has very recently deregistered as currently registered as they would have been at the period end date. The contention around all business rules is that Practices can do the work during a month or quarter, but if the patient deregisters or dies before the period end date, activity will not be recognised. Many Practices get around this by manually reporting these patients to CQRS 'back office' which updates the claims. 

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