Statement from the National Autistic Society:
“NICE has today released its menu of potential new indicators. This looks at what information should be required of local commissioners and what should be required of individual GP practices.
Following on from our charity’s Autism Diagnosis Crisis campaign, which many of you signed up to and helped us with (and thank you for that too!), NAS and the RCGPs have been talking with NICE about these indicators and managed to persuade them that they should pilot an autism register in each GP practice. The idea behind this being that GPs will know that a person is autistic and be able to make reasonable adjustments to a consultation more easily. They will also be able to keep in touch with autistic people better and ensure that they are accessing primary care. This is similar to the existing Learning Disability Register. NICE have been piloting this.
The proposed menu that has opened for consultation today proposes that a Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) indicator be established for an autism register in each practice. QOF exists to change GP behaviour and make sure things are recorded (it’s the reason you had your blood pressure checked the last time you went to the GP).
The consultation is open until 8 March and we will be responding to (strongly!) encourage NICE to take this proposed indicator forward as a means to ensure that primary care data is improved.
The consultation is here: https://www.nice.org.uk/Media/Default/Standards-and-indicators/NICE-indicator-consultation-2017.pdf“