Guidance to help standardise and improve the coding of thyroidectomy and parathyroidectomy procedures is now available from GIRFT, with a version for clinicians and another for hospital coding teams. 

The detailed guidance documents, co-badged by ENT-UK and the British Association of Endocrine and Thyroid Surgeons (BAETS), provides colleagues with brief descriptions of the OPCS-4 procedure codes commonly used for thyroidectomy and parathyroidectomy surgery and reported in Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data. 

The aim is to better capture consistent and accurate coded data which can then be used for more meaningful comparison of activity nationally by organisations such as GIRFT, Model Health System (MHS) and the National Consultant Information Programme (NCIP).  

The guides were created to be used with OPCS-4.11 (used from 1 April 2026 until further notice) but can also be used with historic data coded using OPCS-4.10 (used from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2026).