Surgery outcomes data published on MyNHS

NHS England has published the latest surgery outcomes data for ten specialties and will release information on three more soon as part of a push for greater transparency around clinical performance.

The surgeon-level data has been published on the MyNHS website this morning, as well as on individual websites for each specialty.

The publication has been driven by Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS England’s medical director, who has been a long-term advocate of making outcomes data public.

Twenty years ago, he established the National Adult Cardiac Surgical Database to promote the collection and publication of information about heart operations.

Until last year, heart surgeons remained the only clinical body to publish outcome information to individual level.

NHS England then published performance data for individual surgeons across ten specialties in 2013. Data for lung cancer, neurosurgery and uro-gynaecology have been added this year.

The MyNHS site has also been improved, so that users can search the data by a consultant’s name, hospital or location.

Some specialities have taken the opportunity to create more ‘patient friendly’ websites, with more intuitive interfaces and improved search.

Sir Bruce said the publication of the surgery outcomes data represents “another major step forward on the transparency journey.” “It will help drive up standards, and we are committed to expanding publication into other areas,” he said.

At the weekend, Sir Bruce gave an interview to the Sunday Times in which he said he was looking at a “series of inducements, penalties” to make sure this happened.

The data published this morning covers around 5,000 surgeons and shows whether clinical outcomes for each are within expected limits.

The results are based on national clinical audit data and measure performance against a set of standards relating to survival rates, length of stay in hospital following a procedure, and repeat operation rates, as well as the number of operations performed.

Some specialties have also published other outcome indicators, including length of hospital stay and readmission rates.

Work to compile the data was led by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership, which manages the national clinical audit programme on behalf of NHS England.

Ben Bridgewater, HQIP’s outcomes publication director, said: “By adding more specialties, more indicators and much greater functionality on NHS Choices, we are providing patients and relatives with a much fuller picture and greater reassurance about the care they are likely to receive.

“This is just one part of a broader information landscape, but a vital one.” Further data publication was a feature of the National Information Board’s IT strategy, ‘Personalised Health and Care 2020’, which had a section on how it would “make the quality of care transparent.”

The framework says proposals to collect further data for publication on MyNHS will be made by the end of the year, and consulted on next year, ahead of an annual programme to collect new metrics for the site.

Data for the three remaining specialties to be included within the current programme will be published over the coming months. Neurosurgery and upper gastrointestinal surgery will be published online on 1 December, with stress incontinence surgery following in 2015.

NHS England is also committed to publishing next year the one-year and five-year survival rates at individual hospitals for the four most common cancers – lung, breast, bowel and prostate – which account for 50% of all cancers in England.