The British Spine Registry

Introduction

When the decision was made at BritSpine in Liverpool in 2010 to set up a Spinal registry, the task was led by Ashley Cole and Lee Breakwell, two leading spinal surgeons. They knew exactly what they wanted to achieve. Their objective was to have a simple to use system for collecting, monitoring and analysing extensive datasets relating to spinal procedures, treatment and patient recovery; all of which needed to be part of everyday working practices.  

The data had to be meaningful to clinicians, provide insight for research and most importantly, be easy to report on. It was hoped that data collected in the registry would provide valuable insights that would in turn help improve practice and overall patient care. After a rigorous tender process, Amplitude Clinical Outcomes was identified as the technology partner. 

Background

The British Spine Registry (BSR) is a web-based platform that collects data across the UK relating to 7 major spinal pathways and had the first patient data entered into the system in 2012. The registry collects detailed intervention and patient reported outcomes data that is analysed to increase the clinical understanding of an operation’s success and to help drive continual improvement and best practice. 

The Amplitude platform enables spinal surgeons to collect a broad and detailed amount of data for relatively little time or effort, making the registry one of the most successful platforms for capturing clinical outcomes data in the UK. 

The Approach

Amplitude worked closely with Ashley Cole and Lee Breakwell to understand their particular clinical focus, aims and evaluation requirements and set about configuring the system for spinal procedures and intervention in the UK. 

The British Spine Registry supports all pre- and post-intervention outcome scores needed specifically for spinal intervention and treatment. This allows registered clinicians to monitor their simple operative data or detailed clinical outcomes, putting them in control of their own data and reporting. 

In order to encourage optimum buy-in from both clinicians and patients, the registry needed to be easily accessible, simple to use, incredibly intuitive and cost effective. 

The platform is just that; a simple homepage with easy, secure navigation that makes sense medically, with patient centric pages that ensure their pathway of care is central to the entire process. 

Data can be entered by both clinicians and patients along various timescales across the patient care pathway, providing one of the first truly integrated clinical systems that involve both parties. 

The Result

The British Spine Registry has been adapted well into the practice of Spine Surgeons in the UK. Compliance continues to grow and now 10 years in, the registry is able to analyse the growing data to identify areas for improvement, best practice and training requirements. 

Since 2016 usage of the BSR has been mandatory for all complex spine surgery as part of Specialist Commissioning. 

Since 2017, the national GIRFT program, in collaboration with the BSR has been comparing at unit level the percentage of surgical workload that is recorded on the BSR. 

In 2018 the Spinal CQUIN offered financial incentives for demonstrating that patients were being entered onto the registry and in 2019 a Best Practice Tariff was introduced, whereby failure to enter patients onto the registry results in part of the tariff being withheld. 

Amplitude pro registry™ Highlights

• Digital solution – allows instant access to data 
• Intuitive and simple to use 
• Cost effective and easily accessible 
• Specialty specific 
• Supports all pre and post-intervention outcome scores 
• Highest levels of security 
• Data Exchange – For users wanting to retain their registry data within their own hospital or as an individual, but still submit that data, they can use the Data Exchange functionality.  Data is captured once, within the user’s system and then sent electronically to the BSR and any other registries necessary. 
• Funnel Plots – Each surgeon’s overall performance, as measured by their patient’s average improvement, is displayed in a Funnel Plot (anonymously) enabling them to compare their individual performance against all of the other users of the registry.