Strengthening our NJR services to support hospitals and surgeons
The NJR’s service programme has continued to evolve, with a renewed emphasis on strengthening the support available to hospitals and surgical teams.
By enhancing our systems, refining our processes and furthering our regional engagement, we support hospital staff to maintain their focus on high-quality data. We ensure that every hospital team has access to the tools and guidance they need, from our NJR Regional Support Network. The work is underpinned by strong partnerships with our key contractors and regional teams.
Our ambitious programme of work is focused on supporting surgeons and hospital staff, alongside maintaining the collection of high-quality procedure data, that in turn enables insight and understanding, through our NJR Connect reporting services, for our hospital stakeholders. To ensure the data that is captured continues to meet the high standards set by the NJR, we regularly review processes to ensure hospitals and surgeons are supported in the best way possible
In our most recent review, a number of processes were strengthened, including the NJR ’Escalation Process’, which comes into effect when hospitals are not meeting the required targets set. The purpose of this activity is to identify hospitals that may be experiencing challenges and to ensure appropriate support is put in place, including plans of action to help improve their processes and to enhance communication between hospitals and the NJR support team.
As well as regular NJR statistical analysis work, including ongoing hospital performance outcome monitoring and the analysis underpinning our NJR Annual Report, we have also developed a series of our major enhancements to NJR Connect – Data Services, our hospital data collection and reporting system; alongside annual updates to our Annual Clinical Reports (ACR’s), for hospital management; and our Consultant Level Reports (CLR’s), as well as our annual data refresh on the NJR Surgeon and Hospital Profile website.
Our NJR regional support network
The NJR regional support network – comprising Clinical Liaison Leads (CLL’s), Regional Clinical Coordinators (RCC’s) and Compliance Officers (CO’s) – is a vital communication and liaison resource. The network enables us to interact with hospital surgical and data teams, strengthening engagement and support at a local level
The network also plays a key role in delivering the NJR’s wider programme of work in a range of ways, including the implementation of the NJR escalation process. This process monitors hospital and regional performance against key NJR KPI targets, which are: – consent, compliance and linkability. Our CO’s track performance and provide targets to encourage and monitor the progress of those hospitals who need additional support, working closely with CLL’s and RCC’s to agree a plan of action to help to improve hospital achievement.
We recently further enhanced our resource support for the regional network team, through the introduction of a dedicated website section and Teams channel, enabling a suite of resources consisting of, quarterly regional reports, practical guidance information, as well as regular communication updates from the NJR. Feedback to date on these new channels has been positive, with resources welcomed by all those in the network.
To underpin this activity, regular NJR regional committee meetings are held to ensure those in the support network feel encouraged in their work and to identify what additional input or resources might be needed in future from the NJR to maintain and develop the high level of support being provided to hospitals.