NJR Clinician Feedback – a secure, surgeon-only website – benefited from two phases of improvement
Four phases of improvement to the service were developed in 2012/13 and the first two were implemented successfully in early 2014. The first and second phases included the extension of the revision rate report to include data at five, seven, and ten years. Plus, the provision of a ‘trail’ on the Funnel plot display to show a surgeon their direction of travel towards or away from potential outlier performance. The future use of the ‘trail’ display will enable surgeons to identify changes or trends in their overall outcomes.
The third phase of improvement is due to go live in July 2014 and extends revision reporting to enable surgeons to access primary procedure data for those procedures that have been revised. Importantly, this will include those procedures that have been revised by another surgeon, the time to revision and the reasons for revision surgery.
The fourth and final planned improvement is significant and a brand new service available to Consultants in charge. Scheduled to go live in early June 2014, a pre-formatted Consultant Level Report will be available for download for use in the annual appraisal process and revalidation. The report provides information similar to the Annual Clinical Report to hospitals and further information is shared in the report of the Surgeon Outliers Sub-committee.
NJR Supplier Feedback – a secure, manufacturer-only website – was enhanced and given new reporting features
As part of the work to implement the NJR’s new funding model, a number of enhancements to NJR Supplier Feedback were agreed in order to offer a full range of subscription services to suppliers. Suppliers will be able to pay for a basic service (that is currently provided) or choose to pay for additional online analysis tools from 1 April 2014.
Supplier Feedback currently provides data about primary procedures and this will be extended to include revision procedures. Ankle, shoulder, and elbow primary and revision procedures will also be included.
The other enhanced services will include access to PROMs data and the ability to undertake specific PROMs studies. Additionally, a service called Implant Quality Monitoring (IQM) will be available – this will improve the range of data and information available to suppliers to assist in the post-market surveillance of their specific implants.
NJR Management Feedback – a hospital-focused feedback system – developed its reporting format
NJR Management Feedback is used to generate the information required for the Annual Clinical Reports to hospitals. These reports were sent to Chief Executives in September 2013. Annual Clinical Reports will be provided again in September 2014 with some enhancements. For example, compliance rate reports will provide details for both primary and revision procedures as well as the overall compliance rate. As part of the commitment made in NJR’s strategic plan, further consideration will be given to the improvement and refinement of the service to hospitals so that they may have secure, timely access to their activity and outcomes data in a format most relevant to them.