Highlights: Clinical Outcomes Publication (COP) programme

As part of the NHS England's Clinical Outcomes Publication programme (previously, the ‘Consultant Outcomes Publication’), the NJR added a further year’s data to its website (www.njrsurgeonhospitalprofile.org.uk) in November 2015.  New hospital indicators had been added in March 2015 and some of these indicators were included at surgeon level for the 2015 publication.  These indicators, under the heading ‘About the patients who were treated’, show the percentage of patients who were:

  • Male
  • Under 60 years of age
  • Severely obese (BMI of 35 or greater) (not elbows and shoulders)
  • At higher risk of medical problems before or after surgery (ASA 3+)
  • Diagnosed with conditions other than osteoarthritis

The indicators were also published on the NHS Choices website in February 2016.

The draft indicators are made available to consultants via the NJR Clinician Feedback service prior to publication.  This gives surgeons an opportunity to review the data before the final data set for publication is produced.  Although aimed at consultants working in the NHS in England, surgeons in Wales and Northern Ireland can opt-in to have their data published.

Discussion had been held about the use of HES data to calculate consultant-level compliance rates with the NJR but the data was not available in time for the publication.  Subsequent analysis of the HES data revealed that considerable work was needed before the data could be used to support the development of a compliance rate indicator.  It is unlikely that any new indicators will be included in the 2016 publication.  The NJR Steering Committee, in consultation with the British Orthopaedic Association, still does not feel that it is appropriate to publish surgeon level revision rates until such time as we better understand issues related to data quality.  More information on the data quality programme can be found in the chairman’s report for the Data Quality Sub-Committee in the section ‘Work of the NJR Steering Committee and its sub-committees’ under the ‘Annual Progress’ heading.