02.12.15
NHS England blasted for withholding weekly performance data over winter
NHS England has been blasted for its decision to suspend weekly data publication showing how hospitals are performing given the looming winter crisis around the corner.
Nuffield Trust’s chief executive, Nigel Edwards, said the body’s decision could obscure important areas where the NHS is under excessive pressure over the coming months.
He said: “All the indicators from the most recent set of performance statistics in September were that the health service is heading for a tough winter, with the figures showing that the four-hour waiting time in A&E was not met again, and that delayed transfers of care days had increased by almost 10,000 in a year.
“It’s important for individual trusts to be able to check quickly whether their performance is out of step with that of others, and for areas of the system where excessive pressure is being felt to become clear quickly.
“I am worried that only publishing figures monthly on indicators like waits in A&E and cancelled operations won’t provide this clarity quickly enough.”
And according to the Daily Mail, Dr Clifford Mann, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said without weekly figures on areas such as A&E targets, bed closures and delayed discharges trusts would suffer from a lack of good and useful data.
Concerns also follow similar criticisms from the Labour Party last year, when Andy Burnham MP, shadow home secretary but former shadow health secretary, condemned health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s decision to suspend performance data collection over the festive period.
He called the move a “highly unsatisfactory news blackout” that would keep people in the dark without figures published at the end of every week.
NHS England decided to stop publishing weekly performance data against its targets of treating or admitting patients, which have been largely missed over the last year, in June.
It will also not publish weekly data on the number of ambulances queuing outside A&E departments, cancelled operations or delayed transfers of care for patients as it had done in other winters. These figures will be published monthly instead, with a six week delay.
The decision to switch to monthly publication was originally floated by Sir Bruce Keogh, the organisation’s national medical director, who recommended standardising reporting arrangements so that performance statistic for A&E, RTT, cancer, diagnostics, ambulances, 111 and delayed transfers of care are all published on one day each month.
His recommendation was accepted in full by NHS England boss Simon Stevens and embraced by bodies like the NHS Confederation.
Amidst fresh concerns that the data frequency will impact providers’ grasp of winter pressures, an NHS England spokesman said publishing figures monthly gave people a complete picture “while also smoothing out week-to-week fluctuations which can be misleading”.
“In addition, during the coldest weeks of winter, we will be collecting on a weekly basis some operational data, while seeking to minimise the bureaucratic burden on frontline hospitals and GPs, and this will also be published on a weekly basis,” he added.