QOF Assessor Reports Generation Project

Familiarisation

Please take time to download and study both the installation instructions and QOF Wizard instructions (available from the Apollo web site or by emailing support@apollo-medical.com). This will assist you in familiarising yourself with the processes.
 

About the hardware environment

The software requires a minimum operating system of Microsoft Windows 98 or above to operate, but we strongly advise you to install it onto a system using MS Windows 2000 or XP, as these are much better able to cope with the demands placed on system resources.

Apollo would recommend the following minimum hardware specification

• Access to the practice GP clinical system
• Access to the internet
• A configured email client (Outlook / Outlook Express etc.)
• A minimum of 64MB RAM
• A minimum of 200MB hard disk space free

Please be aware that the above specification is the absolute minimum and Apollo can therefore only offer limited support if your system runs extremely slowly.

The output of the software takes the form of spreadsheets so Microsoft Excel 2000 or later (XP, 2003) must exist on the workstation prior to installing and running the software. It is suggested that the Practice Manager’s or Practice IT Manager’s workstation be used where possible.

Installing the QOF AVRG software

PLEASE NOTE! If you are an EMIS practice, you will need to have your server patched with the software prerequisites before proceeding with the installation, otherwise the install simply won’t work and you will see an error message. If you are unsure as to whether your server has been patched, please contact Apollo Medical Support on 0191 516 6684 where someone will be happy to advise.

As suggested under Hardware Environment, please select the workstation with the best specification available at the practice. The clinical system must be present and working correctly on the chosen workstation. DO NOT install the software onto the clinical server.
 

Running reports

Once the software is installed it should run automatically with very little (if any) intervention from the practice. The reports are scheduled to run between 9.00am and 7.00pm every Sunday and generate up-to-date reports. Any incomplete report runs at the end of this period will automatically be carried forward to subsequent mornings to run between 2.00am and 7.00am. For non-EMIS practices the automatic report runs mean that the workstation on
which the QOF Wizard is installed must be left on at all times otherwise the automatic running of the reports will not happen.

If you are concerned about security, you can set a screensaver password on this machine. Please see the Apollo FAQ document for instructions on how to set one up.

If the practice or QOF Assessor wishes to run the reports manually they may do so by using the QOF Wizard. The “Get A Record” report must be run manually in any case. On its own this does not have any impact on system performance, but care must be taken to run the FULL set of reports outside normal surgery hours to minimise any effect on speed and performance of your computer system. Separate detailed instructions are available for manually running the reports, and further information is also provided in the Apollo FAQ document.