PATI ENT SAFE T Y
Failure to identify the link between birth defects and the drugs prescibed during pregnancy, and the way in which women have been treated after reporting issues, has come under fire in the Cumberlege report.
adds value. Time and effort, therefore, need to be invested in enabling data to be shared in a meaningful way to the key stakeholders to deliver a faster, more effective response when things go wrong and limit the damage to patients. Those stakeholders are the frontline healthcare workers, hospitals and professional bodies, device manufacturers and pharmaceutical firms, and the patients themselves.
Driving standards of care from the frontline A successful registry needs to give individual doctors, nurses and surgeons direct access to accurate and timely information, such as details of patients they have treated, when and where procedures were carried out and the resulting outcomes. This could help them to play a direct role in improving standards. If a clinician is automatically alerted when a patient they have treated has been called back in for a follow up procedure elsewhere in the country, they can review the case and consider whether they need a different approach to the next patient that presents in their office with a similar profile. Individual practitioners could use the data in a registry to measure their performance
and rates of success compared with the treatment and outcomes achieved from similar medical interventions across their trust or more widely. This would enable them to make adjustments to their practice where appropriate to get a better result. With the clear national picture provided by a comprehensive registry, individual doctors and surgeons have the ability to see which treatments work well and which procedures or medical devices have a high risk of complications or increased death rates. This would enable them to make informed clinical decisions to improve outcomes for all their patients. Importantly, a registry should give clinicians the opportunity to identify and connect with other practitioners in their area of expertise. This can often encourage greater collaboration in the development of more effective treatments and procedures to benefit more patients.
Delivering results across the health service With regular access to the latest information on how devices are performing, a hospital or healthcare Trust could spot issues with devices much sooner and halt their use, reducing the number of people affected.
The practice of simply gathering data should never be regarded as a silver bullet for avoiding clinical disasters. A health registry is only as good as the information it contains.
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If a new device designed to treat chronic back pain is causing adverse reactions in some groups of patients, the ability to analyse data such as patients’ medical histories and details from follow-up appointments could help decision-makers to identify the factors behind this and potentially prevent the situation from escalating.
It could be that diabetics or patients
on certain medications are more likely to develop post-operative complications. Knowing this can help to ensure clinicians are aware of the issues that increase the risk of problems, which is vital for reducing harm. Senior leaders and departmental managers should be able to use the information in a registry to monitor the performance of the individual doctors and surgeons and ensure the highest standards of care are being met. Futhermore, if a medical team in one hospital is having particular success in post- operative outcomes for patients, for example, it should be possible to identify and share such best practice. Ultimately, being able to identify treatments that are more likely to be successful, and flag devices that don’t often deliver positive outcomes for patients, can help deliver better outcomes for patients and can help budget-holders to deliver value for money across the NHS.
Linking in suppliers
The time and resources invested in building a successful national registry that is used by all practitioners, hospitals and healthcare Trusts will pay dividends and nurture a shared responsibility for delivering a world- class health service. A registry can extend
MARCH 2021
©Gorodenkoff Productions OU
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