The clinical outcomes publication is an NHS England initiative, commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP), to publish quality measures at unit level and the level of individual consultant doctor using national clinical audit and administrative data.
The aims of publishing these results are to:
- reassure patients that the quality of clinical care is high
- assist patients in having an informed conversation with their consultant or GP about the procedure or operation they may have
- provide information to individuals, teams and organisations to allow them to monitor and improve the quality of the clinical care they provide locally and nationally.
This is the third report on individual activity of surgeons or their specific contribution to lung cancer care. The data relate to patients diagnosed with lung cancer (including non-small-cell lung cancer, carcinoid and small-cell lung cancers) who underwent surgery during the period between 1 January and 31 December 2014. The report has been prepared from data collected by NHS hospitals and submitted to the National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA) via the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) in collaboration with the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland (SCTS).
Outcomes
The following outcomes are reported for surgeons and their hospitals:
- the number of operations carried out by all the specialist hospitals that provide surgery for lung cancer
- the names of the consultant surgeons and how many operations each surgeon completed
- the proportion of patients that survive at 30 days and 90 days after their operation
- length of stay in hospital following an operation.
Resection rates by the multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) within the specialist hospitals will be published in 2017 using data collected in 2015.
For the first time, the results have been adjusted to take into account the patient casemix, which may affect the outcome of the operation, for example the age and performance status (PS) of a patient, and the stage of the disease.
Full results are available at the NHS and the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery (SCTS)