Clinical Outcome Report - The Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS ...

• They provide the most comprehensive information on healthcare in the UK (all inpatients in England).This creates to provide a statistically solid benchmark against which to understand variations in patternsof care between providers.• They are also used to generate official performance indicators and are used in the calculation of resourceallocation. Ensuring the quality of these datasets is therefore a high priority. Also, it can help avoidunnecessary confusion and is more economically efficient if the internal monitoring and management ofhealthcare organisations is based on the same data as is used for external scrutiny.• These Common Data Set is being developed and improved and with the introduction of the ICR willsignificantly expand. This data set will become of increasing importance over time.• The data set allows linkage of patient spells in one NHS facility to another and can provide a commonbasis for an information system for the whole health economy.2. The real time monitoring system – what does it do?• Highlight where the data show significant divergence from national benchmarks at the earliest possibleopportunity• Track whether measures of process and outcome are diverging from or converging towards benchmarks• Make appropriate adjustment for case mix using age, sex, method of admission, deprivation and selectdiagnostic subgroups• Allow comparison of performance data against national benchmarks and against any other selected trustin England.• Allow timely checking and correction of the underlying dataFormats: The system displays data in the following formats:• Alerts: The alerts display draws attention to where there has been significant divergence from expectedlevels. Users are able to adjust alert limits to suit local priorities and targets. Data is presented with rawnumbers, relative risk values and confidence intervals, with red and green icons to show significantnegative or positive divergence.• Statistical process control charts. These track data over time and are designed to identify at the earliestopportunity a significant divergence in outcomes. Alerts are signalled when one is detected.This analysis is designed to draw managers and clinician’s attentions to those issues raised by the data.The system provides a way to track whether a hospital, department or consultant performance isconverging towards or diverging from the rest of the NHS over time given the patient mix. Alerts can becustomised to trigger at different levels.• Relative risk charts. These allow comparative analysis of data over selected time periods and selectedpatient groups, both against national averages and against selected trusts.7 of 8 8-Apr-08