Spire Little Aston Hospital awarded by the National Joint Registry for commitment to patient safety

• Spire Little Aston Hospital has been named as a National Joint Registry (NJR) Quality Data Provider after successfully completing a national data quality audit programme

Colleagues at Spire Little Aston Hospital maintain their gold-level Quality Data Provider award for the fifth year, demonstrating high standards being met towards ensuring compliance with the NJR (National Joint Registry) and is a reflection of strong efforts to achieve such status.

The National Joint Registry monitors the performance of hip, knee, ankle, elbow and shoulder joint replacement procedures to support work to improve the clinical outcomes for the benefit of patients, but also to provide feedback on surgical performance to orthopaedic clinicians and joint replacement implant manufacturers. The registry collects orthopaedic data in order to support patient safety, standards in quality of care and overall value in joint replacement surgery.

In order to achieve the award, hospitals are required to meet a series of six ambitious targets during the audit period 2023/24. One of the targets which hospitals are required to complete is compliance with the National Joint Registry’s mandatory national audit aimed at assessing data completeness and quality within the registry.

The 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 upon the most complete, accurate data possible across all hospitals performing joint replacements operations, including Spire Little Aston Hospital.

Ed Ireland, Hospital Director at Spire Little Aston Hospital, said: "Improving patient safety is of the upmost importance and something all staff at Spire Little Aston Hospital 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 awarded as an NJR Quality Data Provider."

Medical Director of the National Joint Registry, Mr Tim Wilton, said: “Congratulations to colleagues at Spire Little Aston Hospital. 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 Care Quality Commission, to inform their judgements about the quality of health services.”