Westmorland General Hospital (WGH) in Kendal has been honoured as a National Joint Registry (NJR) ‘Quality Data Provider’ after successfully completing a national programme of orthopaedic data audits.
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which runs WGH, is delighted with the award as it recognises the Trust’s commitment to patient safety and excellence of care.
The NJR monitors the performance of hip, knee, ankle, elbow and shoulder joint replacement procedures to improve clinical outcomes for the benefit of patients, but also to support and give performance feedback to orthopaedic clinicians and industry manufacturers.
The registry collects high quality orthopaedic data in order to provide evidence to support patient safety, standards in quality of care, and overall value in joint replacement surgery. The ‘NJR Quality Data Provider’ certificate scheme was introduced to offer hospitals a blueprint for reaching high quality standards relating to patient safety and to reward those who have met registry targets. In order to achieve the award, hospitals are required to meet a series of six ambitious targets during the audit period 2022/23. One of the targets which hospitals are required to complete is compliance with the NJR’s mandatory national audit aimed at assessing data completeness and quality within the registry.
The NJR Data Quality Audit compares the number of joint replacement procedures submitted to the registry to 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 operations, including Westmorland General Hospital. NJR targets also include having a high level of patients consenting for their details to be included in the registry so that they can be more easily contacted in future should the need arise.
Tabetha Darmon, Chief Nursing Officer, UHMBT, said: “Improving patient safety is of the utmost importance and something that all of our staff take very seriously. We fully support the National Joint Registry’s work in facilitating improvement in clinical outcomes for the benefit of joint replacement patients, and we’re delighted to be recognised as a NJR Quality Data Provider.”
Mr Tim Wilton, Medical Director of the National Joint Registry, said: “Congratulations to colleagues at Westmorland General Hospital. The Quality Data Provider Award demonstrates the high standards being met towards ensuring compliance with the NJR and is often a reflection of strong departmental efforts to achieve such status. As well as being a fundamental driver to inform improved quality of care for patients, registry data provides an important source of evidence for regulators, such as the Care Quality Commission, to inform their judgements about the quality of health services.”
Full details about the NJR’s Quality Data Provider certificate scheme can be found online at: https://www.njrcentre.org.uk.
ENDS
Notes for editors:
About the NJR’s Quality Data Provider Award
The scheme has been devised to offer hospitals a blueprint for reaching high patient safety standards through NJR compliance and serves as a reward those who have met their targets. To gain Quality Data Provider (QPD) status for 2023, hospitals were required to meet very ambitious targets. The scheme benefits hospitals and ultimately future patients by recognising and rewarding best practice; increasing engagement and awareness of the importance in quality data collection and helps embed the ethos that better data informs and enables the NJR to develop improved patient outcomes.
About the National Joint Registry (NJR)
The NJR, which covers England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Guernsey, collects information on hip, knee, ankle, elbow and shoulder joint replacement surgery, across both the NHS and independent sector. Data collection began in April 2003 and data submission for NHS organisations was made mandatory from April 2011. Now with over 3.7 million procedure records, the NJR is the largest orthopaedic registry in the world with an international reputation. Recognised as a ‘global exemplar’ of an implantable medical devices registry, the NJR monitors the performance and effectiveness of joint replacement implants in different types of joint replacement surgery, in order to provide an early warning of issues relating to patient safety and improve clinical standards; thus benefiting patients, clinicians and the orthopaedic sector as a whole.
For more information about the NJR see: https://www.njrcentre.org.uk
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