NHS Hospital Operation Statistics?

Is there any way to get stats on a particular operation that is performed at a specific NHS hospital?

In other words, I would like to be able to look up a specific operation performed at a specific hospital, and see a list of all the complications that occurred, and the percentage of patients who had that operation who suffered from each complication afterward.

Can I get this data, or is there anything close to it that might be helpful?

The only thing close that comes to mind is the HESonline.... but it's a lot of things to shift through....

http://www.hesonline.nhs.uk/Ease/servlet/ContentServer?siteID=1937

might be a good idea to call and ask
Good luck

Thanks, but that seems to just list waiting times and amount  of time spent in the hospital?

I'm looking for outcomes after surgery.

From what I understand, hospitals do not report on this.  There is voluntary reporting for medical errors but I am not sure if this is just for internal procedures or if it is released to the public.

I think it depends on the procedure. Before my bone marrow transplant at Kings, as part of the pre-transplant prep I was given a frightening array of statistics about BMT survival rates both at Kings and worldwide. It wasn't broken down as much as I'd have like (the majority of BMT patients are decades older than me and have cancers of some type, which I didn't), but I think that's more down to not enough people in my circumstances. But this was given to ALL patients without having to request it.

So it might be helpful to just ask the department in question - they may already have the information gathered but just not published.

Thanks.

The General Medical Council is in the process of introducing revalidation for all registered physicians, with an expected rollout sometime in 2011.  It is likely that, for surgeons, part of this revalidation will entail tracking outcomes for surgery for each surgeon.  In our trust, as well as many others, the responsibility for collecting this data has been given to the hospital.  Different trusts are at different levels of infrastructure development to meet these upcoming revalidation needs.  Therefore, some trusts may be able to readily give you this information, and some will not.

The Bristol report was pivotal with regards to signalling to trusts the need to track surgical outcomes per surgeon.  Trusts therefore usually collect this information, but may not make it publicly available yet (I'm not an expert in the field of revalidation--most physicians aren't because it's new--but there is talk that information for GMC revalidation purposes will be treated as confidential), or it may be available to the public but hard to collate due to the infrastructure issues I mention above.

In short, contact the trust of interest.  Or, contact the patient relations department of the hospital(s) of interest, and see what they tell you.  Expect some raised eyebrows at your request.  In some trusts, all surgeries for a particular speciality (ex. orthopaedics) may be based at one hospital within the trust, so they may not understand why you are asking at first.

If you're asking around in England and meet any resistance, remind the person you're talking to as to how the Royal College of Surgeons in England feel about the issue: http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/media/media-background-briefings-and-statistics/measuring-surgical-outcomes?searchterm=measuring+

Thanks rsmd9.

You can try looking around Dr Foster's website.  I know if you work in the NHS you are given a multitude of statistics relating to outcomes and mortality rates for certain groups of patients and procedures.  I'm not sure what's readily available on the public Dr Foster site, though.

You can always do an FOI request at the hospital.  You would need to contact the hospital's information governance team and ask to look at outcomes for the procedure for the particular consultant.  They'll usually need a couple weeks notice though, because (speaking from experience working on an NHS information & performance dept) the teams will usually not view it as a priority and, while it's relatively simple to look up from an employee's p.o.v. we've got much more important stuff to deal with.