British Orthopaedic Association commissioning guides

The British Orthopaedic Association and Royal College of Surgeons have developed a range of guides to support commissioning. The guides are currently available for the following conditions:

• Painful deformed great toe in adults
• Painful tingling fingers
• Pain arising from the hip in adults
• Painful osteoarthritis of the knee
• Low back pain
• Subacromial shoulder pain

Access the guides here.

Surgeon's experiences of receiving peer benchmarked feedback

"Policy makers and researchers need to increase professionals’ awareness of the numerous purposes and benefits of using PROMs"

Surgeon's experiences of receiving peer benchmarked feedback using patient-reported outcome measures: a qualitative study
MB Boyce, JP Browne, J Greenhalgh
Implementation Science, 2014, 9: 84

Read more here.

Report cards and outcome measurements to improve the safety of surgical care

"This review summarises the history of American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project and its components, and describes the evidence that feeding outcomes back to providers, along with real-time comparisons with other hospital rates, leads to quality improvement, better patient outcomes, cost savings and overall improved patient safety."

The use of report cards and outcome measurements to improve the safety of surgical care: the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program
M Maggard-Gibbons
BMJ Quality and Safety, 2014; 23: 589-599

Read more here.

RCS commissioning guide: general children’s surgery

"Commissioners should aim to build on the successes of existing clinical networks. Where these networks do not exist, commissioners should aim to create them. The south west, North West and the East Midlands have developed a network approach to general paediatric surgery which provides a good reference point."

Commissioning guide: provision of general children’s surgery
Royal College of Surgeons, British Association of Paediatric Surgeons

April 2014 

Read more here.

RCS commissioning guide: temporomandibular joint disorders

"The aim of this guidance is to provide clarity to commissioning organisations as to the services which should be available to patients with TMD. This guidance aims to address problems that have arisen in recent years with regard to over referral to secondary care of patients with simple problems that could be treated in the community and with others who suffer from a post code lottery with regard to funding of more complex procedures." 

Commissioning guide: temporomandibular joint disorders
Royal College of Surgeons
May 2014

Read more here.

NHS Right Care videos supporting commissioning

NHS Right Care have created four videos to support commissioning:

• Integrating Hub/Prime Vendor
• Commissioning for Value Deep Dives
• Value Based Guidance for Elective Surgery
• Data Tools to Support the RCSE Commissioning Guidance

These videos and more can be accessed from the NHS Right Care Resource Centre.

Consultant treatment outcomes

"On this page there are links to information about individual consultants in a number of clinical areas. It includes results for a range of operations and treatments to help people make decisions about their care. The data show where the clinical outcomes for each consultant sit against the national average."

Access the data here.

Clinical engagement in high-value commissioning

"Following concern from the Department of Health and Surgical Specialty Associations that there was unexplained variation in the rates of some elective surgical procedures between Primary Care Trusts and that PCTs were varying in their use of “thresholds” for funding these procedures, an engagement exercise was undertaken to bring together commissioners, surgeons and patient representatives to develop an evidence based approach to identifying variation and setting commissioning guidance which could be used nationally to reduce unexplained variation."

Clinical engagement in high-value commissioning: elective surgical procedures
N Beasley
Right Care Casebook Series
January 2013

Read more here.