Blog
NHS general practice data, analysed
Occasional England-level analysis of the open datasets behind the Arjus dashboards — QOF, CVDPREVENT and the wider NHS primary care publications — written for the practices and PCN teams who have to act on them. Practice-level versions of these numbers live in the practice summary and the monthly email digest.
Who gains from QOF’s new childhood immunisation improvement route?
18 October 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
From April 2026 VI001 to VI003 pay on the higher of the standard thresholds or improvement on the practice’s own two-year baseline. Using the published 2024/25 and 2025/26 QOF data for every practice in England: 43% of practices were paid nothing on at least one of the three indicators last year, more than half the points went unpaid, London holds a quarter of them, and a worked example from north London shows the route is worth almost nothing to one practice and everything to another. With the drafting ambiguity in Section 4A, and the rest of Amendment No. 4.
Winter adds 8% to general practice’s working day. The flu clinics are not the reason.
10 October 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
Two winters of NHS England appointments data for England and 36 ICBs: practices deliver about 8% more appointments per working day in December to February than in summer, and the uplift grows to 9% once flu and vaccination clinics are removed. Online consultations rise 45%, NHS 111 books its December surge straight into practices, and the emergency departments fill in the same weeks.
A&E is busier than ever, and slowly getting quicker. One in fourteen still waits twelve hours.
27 September 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
Six years of NHS England’s A&E data to March 2026, written for GPs: a record 26.6 million visits, with the growth in minor injury and urgent treatment units rather than hospital emergency departments; waits over four hours falling for a third year but still far off target; 1.8 million visits lasting over twelve hours, unchanged for four years; people from the poorest neighbourhoods visiting nearly twice as often as the richest; two in three who simply turn up; a twenty-point gap between the best and worst areas; and what it means for your practice.
Mental health caseloads are up 31% in three years. NHS trusts are not where the growth is.
20 September 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
Three years of NHS England’s mental health services data to July 2026: 2.4 million people in contact, but the NHS trust caseload is up only 8% while independent assessment providers have quadrupled to 680,000 people. One appointment in six is missed, with a four-and-a-half-fold gap between ICBs; community waits are improving from a very low base; and one child in ten still waits eight months for a first contact.
How to choose a GP surgery: what the numbers can tell you, and what they can’t
13 September 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
My mother asked which surgery to move to. Here is how a GP reads the published NHS data on any practice in England — catchment first, then patient experience, phone-system data, continuity, the clinical measures that QOF points hide, and why a CQC “Good” is a floor rather than a ranking — plus the three things no dataset can tell you.
The year-long waits are vanishing. The six-month surgical waits are not.
9 September 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
England and ICB-level analysis of three years of waiting-times data to June 2026: the list is 600,000 below its 2023 peak and year-long waits have fallen 45% in twelve months — but patients admitted for surgery still typically wait around six months, the queue-snapshot median hides it, and the gap between the best and worst ICBs runs five-fold on the admitted wait.
The registers grew by 1.88 million. The population didn't.
31 August 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
England-level analysis of the QOF 2025/26 publication: 1.88 million more register entries on a registered population that actually shrank. Hypertension crosses ten million, heart failure and pre-diabetes grow fastest, asthma stalls — and osteoporosis is the only register that shrank. All 21 registers, year on year, with the caveats that matter when reading recorded prevalence.
Neighbourhoods, SNPs and MNPs: a plain-English guide
27 August 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
A year on from the 10 Year Health Plan, neighbourhood health has gone from slogan to consultation document. What SNP and MNP contracts actually are, how the local variation of the PCN DES fits in, what's protected, who might sit above your PCN at scale — and the consultation deadline of 10 September 2026 that general practice shouldn't miss. Fully referenced from NHS England, DHSC, Pulse and HSJ.
Read the guideCVDPREVENT: England, to March 2026
25 August 2026 · Dr Yogasakaran Arjuna
The March 2026 extraction is the first full quarter to show what happens when a fifth of QOF is torn up and re-aimed at cardiovascular prevention: blood pressure control hit a record high, lipid optimisation accelerated, smoking-cessation support fell off a cliff — and seven new indicators set the national baseline for SGLT2 inhibitors.