Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal receives award for commitment to ensuring patient safety in trauma and orthopaedic surgery

Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal has been honoured as a National Joint Registry (NJR) ‘Quality Data Provider’ after successfully completing a national programme of orthopaedic data audits.

University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which runs WGH, is delighted with the award as it recognises the Trust’s commitment to patient safety and excellence of care.

The NJR monitors the performance of hip, knee, ankle, elbow and shoulder joint replacement procedures to improve clinical outcomes for the benefit of patients, but also to support and give performance feedback to orthopaedic clinicians and industry manufacturers.

The registry collects high quality orthopaedic data in order to provide evidence to support patient safety, standards in quality of care, and overall value in joint replacement surgery. The ‘NJR Quality Data Provider’ certificate scheme was introduced to offer hospitals a blueprint for reaching high quality standards relating to patient safety and to reward those who have met registry targets.

In order to achieve the award, hospitals are required to meet a series of six ambitious targets during the audit period 2022/23.

One of the targets which hospitals are required to complete is compliance with the NJR’s mandatory national audit aimed at assessing data completeness and quality within the registry.

Tabetha Darmon Executive Chief Nursing Officer UHMBT 2023.jpgThe NJR Data Quality Audit compares the number of joint replacement procedures submitted to the registry to the number carried out and recorded in the local hospital Patient Administration System.

The audit ensures that the NJR is collecting and reporting on the most complete, accurate data possible across all hospitals performing joint replacement operations, including Westmorland General Hospital.

NJR targets also include having a high level of patients consenting for their details to be included in the registry so that they can be more easily contacted in future should the need arise.

Tabetha Darmon, Chief Nursing Officer, UHMBT, said: “Improving patient safety is of the utmost importance and something that all of our staff take very seriously.  We fully support the National Joint Registry’s work in facilitating improvement in clinical outcomes for the benefit of joint replacement patients, and we’re delighted to be recognised as a NJR Quality Data Provider.”

Mr Tim Wilton, Medical Director of the National Joint Registry, said: “Congratulations to colleagues at Westmorland General Hospital. The Quality Data Provider Award demonstrates the high standards being met towards ensuring compliance with the NJR and is often a reflection of strong departmental efforts to achieve such status.

‘’As well as being a fundamental driver to inform improved quality of care for patients, registry data provides an important source of evidence for regulators, such as the Care Quality Commission, to inform their judgements about the quality of health services.”

Full details about the NJR’s Quality Data Provider certificate scheme can be found online at:  https://www.njrcentre.org.uk