Highlights: Clinical Outcomes Publication (COP) programme

Each year, the NJR publishes data about surgeon and hospital level activity as part of NHS England’s Clinical Outcomes Publication (COP).  This data is shared with NHS Choices and the Private Healthcare Information Network’s (PHIN) and is published on the Choices website a few months after it first appears on the NJR’s Surgeon and Hospital Profile website.  Whilst any surgeon submitting data to the NJR may opt in to have their data published, it is mandatory for surgeons who have undertaken NHS funded procedures in NHS England hospitals.

All hospitals submitting data to the NJR are included in the publication but data relating to individual surgeons who only practise in hospitals in Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Isle of Man or only have a private practice will not appear unless the surgeon has opted to have their data published.  The hospital-level information will also vary, for example, Patient Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMs) data is currently only available for NHS England hospitals.

The published information about hospitals includes the types and number of joint replacements undertaken, a list of the consultants who have submitted records to the NJR, patient improvement and outcomes (where the data is available), and information about the casemix of patients being treated.  Additionally, the quality of the data provided by the hospital is reported on:  high quality data is required for accurate analysis relating to the outcomes of surgery.

For surgeons, the published data provides information about their practice profile and the types of patient that they have treated.  Also included is a report on mortality events within ninety days of surgery.

All surgeons have the opportunity to validate their data prior to its publication in order to ensure its accuracy. 

For the 2018/19 publication, there will be no changes to the types of indicator published but the unit-level revision rate reports will be based on the latest ten years of data and not data from the whole life of the registry as they are currently.  However, the change of the data set from Version 6 to Version 7 and the addition of new types of procedure will result in changes to the way in which some reports are calculated. 

The NJR Steering Committee, working with the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA), has agreement from NHS England that it is not appropriate to publish surgeon-level revision rates and that they will continue to be published at a unit level only

Please note that the data is an annual publication, i.e. once published, the data will not be refreshed for another year.