The Department of Health and The NHS Information Centre have published the data for more than 200 indicators against which NHS clinical teams can compare their performance.
By typing keywords into a section marked Indicators for Quality Improvement on the IC website, individuals can now assess their performance against the indicators that are most relevant to their work to highlight areas for improvement.
The quality indicators were a recommendation of Lord Darzi’s final report from the Next Stage Review of the NHS, High Quality Care for All.
Speaking earlier this year, he said: “These indicators have been developed in partnership with frontline staff. This initial list is just the start of an NHS wide resource that will challenge and stimulate NHS staff to drive up the quality of care they deliver and benchmark their work.”
The first phase of the project was completed in May, when the indicators were published. Now, data has been provided so that staff can judge how they are doing against them.
The 232 indicators cover patient safety, effectiveness of care and patient experience were available on the IC website.
However, comments posted by EHI readers raised concerns that the information available on site was not always relevant to the search they carried out.
On one occasion, searching for “sex education” resulted in indicators relating to “mortality following hip/knee replacement.”
Updated information on the IC website says: “We recognise that some areas are under-represented and that there are gaps in data and information to be filled, and that significant work is happening to develop indicators.”
The indicators have been selected in conjunction with the Royal Colleges, following an extensive consultation with the NHS, and are currently based on existing national indicator sets and data collections.
Over the five years, the indicators will be expanded to address the wide range of NHS and Social Care services. The indicators will be refreshed monthly, picking up the latest data for the indicators as they are released by the publishing organisations.
The NHS Information Centre has made 75% of the data available for download and is working with data suppliers to make further information available.