Breast surgery teams are invited to sign up for a webinar to learn more about using soon-to-be published Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) data on the Model Health System (MHS) to help maximise capacity.
Breast surgery will be the next specialty added to MHS by the GIRFT team, enabling Trust and system colleagues to monitor their performance data and identify where improvements can be made. More than 90 new metrics will allow users to gauge their performance in areas such as breast excision, mastectomy and reconstruction, drilling down into metrics on length of stay, complications and day case rates, as well as benchmarking activity and outcomes against their peers.
A MHS webinar on 11th October (1-2pm) – led by GIRFT’s senior clinical advisor for breast surgery Tracey Irvine – will demonstrate the new metrics and how to use them, as well as highlighting how they can support teams to free up more capacity in their units.
The GIRFT data follows on from the programme’s national report for breast surgery (2021), which offered the most complete picture of breast surgery activity there has ever been: the first time that data about all breast operations in England has been brought together, whether carried out as plastic surgery, breast surgery, general surgery or another specialty.
Based on meetings with clinicians and managers in 129 breast surgery units, the report showed that around 102,000 breast operations are carried out every year in the NHS in England, with more than 500,000 new outpatient referrals.
The authors – Tracey Irvine (consultant oncoplastic breast surgeon at the Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust) and Fiona MacNeill (consultant breast surgeon at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust) – stressed the importance of sharing the GIRFT data to the MHS to enable teams to monitor their own performance and support work towards implementing many of GIRFT’s wide-reaching recommendations.
Miss Irvine said: “The ability to bring together data about all breast surgery was central to our approach in the GIRFT national review. It was important to us to ensure all the data we gathered could be utilised as a baseline for the future, so we are delighted to see these metrics will very soon be available on the MHS for all to use.
“Not only will they enable providers to make up-to-date and ongoing comparisons of activity and outcomes with their peers, but they will also be a means of evaluating the impact of new techniques, protocols, guidelines and research.
“I hope to see as many colleagues as possible at the webinar on 11th October. As we all work so hard to ensure the best possible service for breast surgery patients, I want to demonstrate to teams how this data can improve efficiency and create some additional capacity.”
The GIRFT breast surgery metrics are expected to go live a few days before the webinar. Log in or register for access to the Model Health System here.
Register for the webinar here.
