Insight — QOF 2026/27 — where pharmacists move the numbers.

QOF is built around chronic disease management — cardiovascular risk reduction, diabetes control, respiratory care, chronic kidney disease, mental health and medication safety. Each of these depends on patients being on the right medicines, at the right dose, with the right monitoring, reviewed at the right intervals. That is exactly the work clinical pharmacists are trained to do, and it is work that is often deferred when GP and nurse capacity is stretched. Bringing pharmacist capacity into the practice typically unlocks several percentage points of QOF achievement in a single quarter.

Diabetes and chronic kidney disease overlap heavily in the QOF register and respond well to a single pharmacist-led optimisation programme. The work is methodical: identify patients with HbA1c above target, optimise oral therapy and titrate insulin where appropriate, ensure ACEi or ARB therapy is in place and dose-titrated to renal function, and recall patients for the structured review and bloods their QOF achievement depends on. Pharmacy technicians absorb the recall and search work; the pharmacist handles the clinical decisions. A well-run programme typically moves both the diabetes and the CKD register meaningfully across a single QOF year.

If you'd like to walk through what this would look like for your PCN specifically, talk to our Service Development team. We'll cost a plan against your remaining ARRS allocation and your existing pharmacy workforce, and have a written proposal back within a week.