Single point of access to comparative data for hospital consultants will help improve outcomes for patients

Improvements in patient care will be supported by the development of a new secure online portal enabling secondary care consultants to access individual and comparable clinical information and learning resources.

The National Clinical Improvement Programme (NCIP) is developing the portal to provide consultants in England with a view of their personal activity and metrics that describe the services they deliver. It will illustrate information about services using data from many sources, including from clinical audits and registries, and from the NHS Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database. By putting this data into one portal, NCIP aims to give hospital consultants access to meaningful clinical information on which to compare themselves with national benchmarks to support their learning and development.

The NCIP portal is currently in the early stages of development. It will be rolled out in phases across surgical and medical specialties, with an initial release to general surgery, paediatric surgery, and urology consultants in a test group by the end of 2018, with general release for these specialties in early 2019.

It is intended that, in time, the NCIP programme will be extended to GPs giving them individual level information to support them to reflect and learn.

The well-established Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme is leading the development of NCIP for hospital specialties. A key objective of the GIRFT programme is to improve data quality and to reduce variation in treatment and procedures where it is unwarranted. The GIRFT clinical leads are working with their professional organisations to determine the design and content for the NCIP portal. The NCIP data and comparative national benchmarks will be linked to GIRFT specialty reports, good practice and case studies which can be used by individual consultants to improve their learning.

Professor Carrie MacEwen, Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, said:

“The Academy and the Medical Royal Colleges fully support hospital consultants having access to meaningful information and outcomes data on which to compare themselves with national benchmarks to support their learning and development which will, in turn, improve patient care. We believe that understanding their data will assist clinicians in their natural drive to improve standards and the quality of care. Colleges have been involved in the development of NCIP from an early stage and support its continuing development.”

Professor Derek Alderson, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, said:

“It is important that as a profession we robustly analyse and evaluate our surgery so that we can understand how best to improve the care we provide to patients. The National Clinical Improvement Programme will offer another powerful tool to help surgeons scrutinise their performance.”

Click here for further information on NCIP >

For more information contact:

Gregory Stafford, Head of Engagement and Communication, g.stafford@nhs.net (Mob: 07771 345 872)

Notes to editors

• Examples of metrics are available at www.Gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk
• Consultation with stakeholders is ongoing. Consultants will be involved in a series of design workshops and user and feedback groups prior to the first phase release of information at the end of 2018.
• The secure portal will be hosted by NHS Improvement.