Last surgical speciality data published

The final three of ten specialties will publish individual surgeon’s performance data from today on NHS Choices.

The publication of surgical outcomes for individual hospital consultants begun as a pilot in June this year with data available for adult cardiac surgery and vascular surgery.

Over the summer five further specialties followed. Today NHS England announced that upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery and head and neck cancer surgeries have also been published and bowel cancer surgery will follow on 23 September.

Dr Mike Bewick, deputy medical director at NHS England said this was the start of the journey towards "complete transparency in the NHS".

"Putting information like this into the public domain increases accountability and empowers commissioners to make more informed decisions about the services they buy for their communities," he said.

“This is part of a journey towards a culture of complete transparency in the NHS and we need to build on what we have started."

The mortality rates for more than 3,000 surgeons on more than 20 different procedures will ultimately be published online.

Mortality rates for heart surgery have been published for many years as a result of the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry, which found that babies undergoing heart surgery at the hospital in the mid-1980s had died unnecessarily, partly because of the lack of available performance rates.

However, outside of cardiac surgery, this is the first time this level of surgical outcomes has been published openly online.

Under the Data Protection Act, consultants did not have to agree to their results being published.

However, Dr Bewick said that more than 99% of surgeons agreed to it and those who refused are listed on the NHS Choices website.

“I would like to thank surgeons and the surgical specialties who have published these reports for the way they have embraced this important piece of work," said Dr Bewick.

“The overall results show that mortality rates for almost all surgeons are within the expected range."

The reporting of the data was led for NHS England by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership.

This was overseen by HQIP outcomes publication director professor Ben Bridgewater, a practising heart surgeon who leads the cardiac consultant-level reporting.

Professor Bridgewater said they had already begun work to improve the process further. "To have delivered something unique in its breadth of surgeries and geographical coverage in such a short space of time is testament to the clinicians and their representatives who have worked so hard on this,” he said.

“Patients can be clearly reassured about the standards of care they can expect for ten different specialties.”

The mortality rates will be refreshed yearly and reporting of the data will be mandatory from 2014-15.