New outcomes data published next year

NHS England plans to publish outcomes data for non-surgical physicians and ten new clinical indicators next year.

The commitments are being made as part of the UK’s national action plan at the Open Government Partnership’s annual summit in London today.

Surgeon-level data from national clinical audits across 10 specialties was published earlier this year. NHS England plans to extend the programme to new treatments and conditions in 2014, including data from non-surgical physicians.

It will publish ten new clinical indicators for areas including cancer, children’s services, mental health and stroke. The indicators are designed to inform the public about how well services are performing and meeting their needs. The first will be available by summer 2014 with more available over the following 12 months.

As reported in EHI this month, the re-launch of NHS Choices in November will also include publication of the general practice high-level indicators in the NHS Choices accountability tool, designed to give people a comprehensive view of practice performance.

Another commitment is for the Friends and Family Test to be extended to cover GP practices, community and mental health services in December 2014 and all other NHS services by 2015.

NHS England also says that a large new dataset to be extracted from GP practices will be linked to data from all hospitals by June 2014. This is the care.data programme which was due to start extracting GP data this year, however concerns about properly informing the public about the scheme mean extracts will not begin until spring 2014.

Tim Kelsey, NHS England’s national director for patients and information, described today’s announcements as, “the single most important step forward in transparency for healthcare anywhere in the world.

“The English healthcare system is already one of the most transparent in the world, but these new measures will transform outcomes, put citizens at the centre of everything we do and will provide the means by which NHS England will be at the cutting edge of medical science.

“Greater transparency will empower patients and citizens to hold the health service to account and at the same time support life sciences research so that more life-saving treatments can be found.

Other commitments included in the transparency action plan being launched today include the release of information about care services for around 10,000 care homes, collected by NHS Choices, which will be made available as open data in the summer of 2014.

Also, new Patient Centred Outcome Measurement tools to show whether services for people with 20 different rare and complex conditions are meeting the needs of their patients.

The Open Government Partnership is made up of 60 nations and was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for countries committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens.