Positive outlook for orthopaedics

March 2018 was a hub of activity for the orthopaedic community, with many specialist societies meeting across the country for their annual meetings. This regular opportunity to meet and engage in peer discussion and reflection offers Orthopaedic professionals the chance to step back from the demanding frontline and gain insights into trending issues, conduct peer reviews, discuss recent reports and look to the future of Orthopaedics and the technology that serves the field.

As a leading supplier to the UK’s Orthopaedic community, Amplitude Clinical Outcomes was privileged to attend various meetings and was able to provide help and support to clinicians up and down the country who interact with an Amplitude products on a daily basis. Whether that be via any of the mandated and voluntary registries that Amplitude operate or through one of the many pro enterprise™ platforms that are utilised in Hospital Trusts across the NHS and Private Sector.

A strong theme that was woven across all specialties was the increased awareness of the importance of using clinical outcomes to measure the long-term effectiveness of treatment pathways, surgical implants and techniques.

BRITSPINE, one of the annual meetings for Spinal and Neuro Surgeons, took place in Leeds and welcomed 500 attendees looking to learn, engage and network.

The British Spine Registry’s mandated status meant that its discussion was inevitable, however, the hype surrounding the accelerated growth of the registry ensured its popularity as a topic.

The British Spine Registry (BSR) has experienced continued growth, recently documenting its 110,000th patient. The BSR team took the opportunity to introduce exciting new developments, including the release of the Funnel Plots module, a report function that plots each surgeon’s overall performance, as measured by their patient’s average improvement. The results are displayed in a Funnel Plot that enables them to compare their individual performance against all of the other users of the registry.

The BSR is also hopeful that submissions to the registry will help clinicians achieve best practice tariffs, a national price that is designed to incentivise high quality and cost-effective care. By reducing unexplained variation in clinical quality and encouraging best practice, hospitals and trusts can gain extra funding as an incentive to shift from usual care to best practice.

Mr Vikas Khanduja, Consultant Orthopaedic and Hip & Knee Surgeon and Non-Arthroplasty Hip Registry (NAHR) steering group committee member, spoke passionately at the recent British Hip Society meeting in Derby about the importance of data submission to both mandatory and voluntary registries such as the NAHR. Mr Khanduja spoke to an attentive audience about the advances being made with the collection of data under the NAHR and encouraged clinicians that weren’t already submitting outcomes data to registries, to do so as an imperative. The NAHR website was launched at the event, to a great reception.

The British Association for Surgery of the Knee (BASK), met in Leicester and received nearly 400 delegates who participated in free paper sessions, instructional courses and invited lectures over the course of 2 days.

Mr Tim Spalding, Consultant Orthopaedic Knee Surgeon and NLR steering group chairman, updated attendees on the progress of the NLR (National Ligament Registry) and Mr David Elson, Consultant Orthopaedic Knee Surgeon and UKKOR (UK Knee Osteotomy Registry) steering group chairman spoke about the advancements being made in these non-mandated registries.

Both were incredibly pleased with the engagement of clinicians and were looking at future developments to continue the positive momentum being experienced.

Across all meetings, there was an obvious increase in the groundswell towards supporting registries, in particular, for those surgeons practising in both the NHS and the private sector, in light of the need to submit accurate data to the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) and the increased momentum to support the NHS’s Get it Right First Time (GIRFT) initiative.

For both of these, submissions to registries via an Amplitude pro one or pro enterprise platform will actively support the GIRFT initiative by providing real-time reporting and analysis for timely decision making, with the data being controlled and housed locally.

If you would like more information about how Amplitude Clinical Outcomes can help your department and trust, are looking to set up a registry, or would like to improve the collection of clinical and PROMs data collection, please contact our team.

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