At the end of October, NHS Digital published an update to the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF). This dataset tells us the prevalence of diagnosed common health conditions for people registered at GP practices in Oxfordshire.

We have used these to update the ‘GP Recorded Conditions’ section of the Public Health Surveillance Dashboard.

Data for 2018/19 show that:

• For many conditions, Oxfordshire has a lower diagnosed prevalence than the national average
• There is more variation in the districts, which may be partly accounted for by differences in the population profile between each area
• The prevalence of depression is significantly higher in Oxfordshire than the national average. Since 2017/18, there has been a significant increase in prevalence in Oxfordshire and all districts except South Oxfordshire. There are now 67,557 people (aged 18+) registered at Oxfordshire practices with a diagnosis of depression, which is 11.1% of the registered adult population.
• Diagnosed asthma prevalence in Cherwell has increased significantly since 2017/18 (6.0% up from 5.7%), though there has been no significant change in Oxfordshire overall.
• Of the conditions included in the Public Health Surveillance Dashboard, those with the highest number of diagnoses in Oxfordshire are hypertension (94,342), depression (67,557), asthma (43,906) and diabetes (31,146)

We have to be careful interpreting these data because the prevalence of each condition is expressed as a percentage of the whole registered population. This means they do not consider factors such as age, sex or ethnicity, which can affect the likelihood of developing some health conditions. They also do not include people who are awaiting diagnosis, or people who do not visit their GP. There may be some variation between practices in the completeness and quality of recording.

Explore the whole Public Health Surveillance Dashboard here.