Clinical Outcomes Publication quaterly newsletter

HQIP: Clinical Outcomes Publication quarterly newsletter

May 2016 - Issue 4

Welcome to the fourth edition of HQIP’s quarterly Clinical Outcomes Publication (COP) newsletter, designed to keep you updated on all COP-related news and developments.

In this issue:

COP rebranded to Clinical Outcomes Publication and COP programme 2016-20
COP Technical Manual published
Publication spotlight: National Lung Cancer Audit clinical outcomes publication
COP Audit provider Group: March 2016 5....COP 2016/17 publication timetable
HQIP COP points of support

COP rebranded Clinical Outcomes Publication and COP Programme 2016-20

Dr Kieran Mullan, HQIP clinical lead for COP

Today we can announce the rebranding of COP to Clinical Outcomes Publication as we publish the COP Programme Brief 2016-20. This Brief outlines the vision for the programme with a drive to widen activity across additional specialities.

Over the first three years we’ve seen literally millions of visits to the publication pages on NHS Choices and MyNHS as well as tracking improvements in mortality rates and volumes. And over these years we’ve moved on to publishing additional outcomes beyond volumes and mortality per operator, including publications at team- and unit-level.

Across the programme we now have over 50 indicators, chosen in partnership with the relevant clinicians. We aim to choose indicators that reflect what excellent clinical effectiveness looks like in the relevant specialty. As we widen beyond mortality and volumes we are better meeting this aim.

Learning from the consultant-level publications, the programme briefing describes how we will widen our support to other team-level publications. It makes sense to grab the ‘low hanging fruit’ from the large volume of existing team-level audit data. In a relatively short space of time we can support existing NCAPOP audits to take advantage of the opportunity to publish on MyNHS and NHS Choices and, as a result, greatly increase the accessibility of data for patients and stakeholders alike.

We remain committed to having new consultant-level outcomes where appropriate and we are pleased to announce the National Ophthalmology Audit will be joining the publication at consultant-level in 16/17. Rebranding to Clinical Outcomes Publication better reflects the scope of the planned future programme.

View the COP 2016-20 Programme Briefing here.

COP Technical Manual published

We are pleased to be publishing the COP Technical Manual today.

We have been finalising the COP Technical Manual over the last few months which has been developed in partnership with colleagues in the audit community. As well as attending a workshop earlier last year, all stakeholders were given the opportunity to comment as part of the consultation.

We’ve taken on board the wide variety of comments made in this consultation to make what we think are several improvements as a result. We will release the responses to the consultation document shortly so you can see what changes were made as a result of your feedback and our reasoning for when we decided not to make changes.

We hope this manual serves as a useful reference guide as well as providing audits with goals for development as we recognise not all audits will be in a position to deliver on the best practice outlined in the manual. And we remain committed to supporting audits that want to take the lead on defining excellence in their area.

We have also been working on revising the Detection and Management of Outliers (2011) – for management of team based outliers – and this shall be released shortly.

View the COP Technical Manual here

Publication spotlight: National Lung Cancer Audit clinical outcomes publication:

An update from Rosie Dickinson, project manager, Clinical Effectiveness and Evaluation Unit, Royal College of Physicians

On 8 March 2016, the National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA), in collaboration with the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland (SCTS) published the second lung cancer clinical outcomes publication (LCCOP), relating to the activity of consultant thoracic and cardiothoracic surgeons for patients diagnosed with lung cancer who underwent surgery in 2013.

The outcome measures reported this year are:

The number of operations carried out by all the specialist hospitals that provide surgery for lung cancer
The names of consultant surgeons and how many operations each surgeon completed
The proportion of patients by surgical unit that were alive 30 days and 90 days after their operation

The results show that 96 patients out of 100 were alive 90 days post-surgery, compared with 95 in 2012.

Lung cancer consultant outcomes publication 2016

As Dr Ian Woolhouse, senior clinical lead for the NLCA explains: “this demonstrates a reassuringly high level of safety for what is often complex surgery, especially considering the age and health profile of patients with lung cancer”.

The results are available online for patients via NHS Choices, and for health professionals on MyNHS and the SCTS website.

The NLCA team has produced a commentary document providing some narrative, infographics and funnel plots to explain the results. This is available on the RCP website.

For the next report, the NLCA team plans to risk adjust the data and provide results on resection rates and length of stay following admissions.

For further information on the LCCOP programme contact the NLCA team at NLCA@RCPlondon.ac.uk

COP Audit Provider Group March 2016

Louise Cleaver, COP project manager

Thank you to colleagues who joined our first COP Audit Provider Group teleconference on 30 March 2016. In total we had 16 audits represented (clinical representatives, data analysts and project managers) from across the COP programme, together with colleagues from HQIP and NHS Choices.

The agenda included an update from Dr Kieran Mullan, COP clinical lead, reflecting on the programme achievements for 2015/16, and a forward look to the programme for 2016/17. Anieakan Assangha, currently the search and find lead at NHS Choices, provided an update on the volume of visitors accessing COP data and talked through the COP data upload processes at NHS Choices and MyNHS.

A highlight for me was to learn that on average there are 85,000 visits to COP data on NHS Choices every month, and 75% of visitors find the consultant via the Hospitals profile page. Our next call will be scheduled in June.

To help us confirm a date, please complete the doodle poll here. If you would like to suggest an agenda item on a future COP Audit Provider Call, email me at louise.cleaver@hqip.org.uk.

COP 2016/17 publication timetable

In 2016/17 we will continue to stagger publication of COP data on NHS Choices and MyNHS. The activity timelines were communicated in February. Thank you to all the audits that have responded and confirmed their activity timelines.

NHS Choices and MyNHS have limited capacity to process three COP publications per month, and as a rule they publish on the first Tuesday of every month. So far we have been able to align publication dates to the audits requirements, but we still have several publication dates to confirm on the timetable. We are continuing to work with audits to identify publication dates and finalise the publication timetable for 2016/17.

If you would like to discuss your activity timelines for COP publication in 2016/17, email louise.cleaver@hqip.org.uk.