The threat and worry that GPs would no longer be assessed for identifying depression in diabetics, measuring the severity of depression in patients at the time of diagnosis or reassessing severity within a set period of time is over.
The Quality of Outcome Framework sets out the key indicators against which GPs’ performance is measured and rewarded and was proposing to drop depression from GP quality indicators.
At a time of economic uncertainty, NHS managers are ‘extremely worried’ that the demand for mental health services will increase.  This increase would have coincided with the proposals to reduce the onus on GPs to identify depression in their patients.
The NHS Confederation warned that if the plans to remove financial incentives for GPs to monitor depression in patients was removed this could result in later diagnosis and more intensive treatment.
 
‘Primary care is the first point of contact for the vast majority of people using the NHS and one third of GP appointments are mental health related’ the director of the NHS Confederation Mental Health Network, Mr Shrubb added.
‘Looking over the next 12 months, the people running NHS mental health services are extremely worried about how the state of the economy will impact on demand for their services. Imperfect as the indicators are, our members think it would be reckless to remove the depression indicators from the GP treatment framework until suitable alternatives are in place.’ Mr. Shrubb concluded.

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