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Independent sector must take the lead in establishing a 'level playing field' for performance indicators
12 September 2007
Independent hospitals should publish clinical performance indicators, including success rates, and collect the same activity and performance data as NHS hospitals to help enable real choice for patients and commissioners, says Bupa's group medical director, Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen.
Speaking today at the Independent Healthcare Convention, Dr. Vallance-Owen called for independent and NHS hospitals to establish common and agreed definitions for performance indicators and for all hospitals, over time, to contribute fully to the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) dataset. Importantly, he suggested that performance indicators should go beyond failure statistics on death rates, infections and complaints to include success rates through patient reported outcomes, measuring health gain from treatment, and patient satisfaction levels.
Addressing a session on information at Laing & Buisson's convention, Dr Vallance-Owen said, "It is high time that we started routinely measuring success as well as failure in healthcare. This information is essential if hospitals are to provide meaningful indicators for treatments where patients want to know more than whether they are likely to be alive or dead at the end of the process.
"Success rates would drive continuous quality improvement, help patients and their GPs make more informed choices, and help move the productivity discussion from measure of output to the much more relevant measure of outcome, which is actually what healthcare is all about."
Dr. Vallance-Owen told the convention of healthcare analysts that the independent sector should lead the way in publishing an agreed set of clinical performance indicators because it has the ability to move more quickly than the NHS. The long-term aim, however, should be for all hospitals to collect and publish the same set of indicators, bringing to an end the significant gaps that currently exist in the UK 's healthcare statistics.
Dr Vallance-Owen said, "Our long-term aim should be the establishment of a level-playing field in data collection across both the independent and public healthcare sectors. This is the only way for us to establish a complete picture of health and social care delivery in the UK.
"The benefits of achieving this complete picture would be significant. Commissioners would, for the first time, be able to compare both independent and NHS hospitals in their local area and make sensible and cost effective purchasing decisions for their local communities."
Dr. Vallance-Owen concluded that "Agreeing on a set of performance indicators would help to bring greater transparency to UK healthcare industry of the future."
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