Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre in top 25% to achieve national certification

Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre in Plymouth is within the top 25% of hospitals in the country to be named as a National Joint Registry (NJR) Quality Data Provider.

The NJR monitors the performance of hip, knee, ankle, elbow and shoulder joint replacement operations in order to improve clinical results for patients, clinicians and the health sector. The registry collects high quality orthopaedic data which provides evidence to support patient safety, quality care standards and overall cost-effectiveness.

The ‘NJR Quality Data Provider’ certificate scheme is designed to offer hospitals a blueprint for reaching standards relating to patient safety, and to reward those which have met registry targets.

To achieve the award, Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre met a series of six ambitious targets during the audit period 2017/18, including compliance with the NJR’s mandatory national audit for data completeness and quality within the registry.

The NJR Data Quality Audit investigates the accurate number of joint replacement operations submitted to the registry compared with the number carried out and recorded in the local hospital Patient Administration System. The audit ensures that the NJR is collecting and reporting on the most complete, accurate data possible across all hospitals performing joint replacement surgery, including Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre.

NJR targets also include encouraging a high level of patients to consent for their details to be included in the registry and for demonstrating timely responses to any alerts issued by the NJR in relation to potential patient safety concerns, if necessary.

Surgical teams at Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre carry out a wide range of orthopaedic procedures for hips, knees, shoulder and elbows, feet and ankles, and hands and wrists. The hospital was the first of its kind to achieve an ‘Outstanding’ rating from the Care Quality Commission.

Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre is part of the treatment choice available to NHS patients. Provided it is for a procedure which is carried out at the hospital and a referring health professional agrees that treatment is required, patients can ask to be referred to Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre for their care. This is also true for patients who have waited for more than 18 weeks for their treatment to commence – they can ask to move to the Centre’s waiting lists which are generally shorter.

Mark White, Hospital Director at Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre, commented: “Improving our already excellent track record for patient safety is of the utmost importance and something all our teams take very seriously. We fully support the NJR’s work in facilitating improvement in clinical outcomes and governance for the benefit of joint replacement patients, and we are delighted to have been chosen as a ‘NJR Quality Data Provider’.”

National Joint Registry Medical Director, Tim Wilton, added: “Congratulations to colleagues at Peninsula NHS Treatment Centre. The Quality Data provider Award demonstrates the high standards being made towards ensuring compliance with the NJR and is often a reflection of strong departmental efforts to achieve such status. Registry data now provide an important source of evidence for regulators, such as the Care Quality Commission, to inform their judgments about services, as well as being a fundamental driver to inform improved quality of care for patients.”

Matthew Porteous, Chair of the NJR Data Quality Committee, commented: “It is clear that for surgeons and patients alike, the necessity for having accurate and complete data is an absolute requirement. The Quality Data Provider Award continues to go from strength to strength and highlights the number of hospitals which are no fully engaged with the NJR’s data completeness programme.”