NJR Shoulder Data Quality Audit (DQA)
Our shoulder audit was conducted to retrospectively check and improve the volume and quality of the registry shoulder joint replacement data.
We engaged with selected hospitals to help us with the review of shoulder procedure data that have been flagged as missing from the registry from a comparison with data in the registry to that for Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) records. The time period of shoulder data to be audited was from the start of April 2012 to the end of September 2020 (data for procedures performed after September 2020 are already being reviewed as part of the standard automated NJR data quality audit and so were not included in this audit dataset).
The purpose of the audit was to identify from the comparison of NJR records with those of hospitals (HES data), any eligible shoulder joint replacement procedures that had not been entered into the registry and to ask hospitals to obtain the clinical data required to enter these missing procedures retrospectively. It is possible that some of these procedures may have been incorrectly coded initially and may not have been eligible for registry submission (for example a procedure may have been coded as shoulder joint replacement but in fact was a proximal humerus fixation). It is helpful that this is identified, and the case then discounted as a missing joint replacement procedure.
Acknowledgement of audit contributors
We are very grateful to all of our audit contributors, who have been listed here and have also received a letter to acknowledge the skills they have demonstrated in this audit, including understanding the importance of routine data collection and the principles of research governance.
(This list is not exhaustive – as there are still some audit contributors yet to be added.)
Their acknowledgement letter can be used as evidence of research skills for the Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) requirements.
All contributors will be sent information from the analysis of the data collected so that the success of the work can be presented locally – which is encouraged.
Audit process
Audit process
Many hospital data managers were involved in this audit and also in our recent NJR elbow audit and we are grateful for their efforts which resulted in a significant increase in the volume and quality of both elbow and shoulder procedure records into the registry.
The shoulder audit work resulted in 4,490 procedure records previously missed being added to the registry. These extra records greatly improve our data analysis and thereby help us in the achievement of our aims of enabling greater future patient safety and improving surgery outcomes.
For both audits, the teams for each hospital site were comprised of the following members:
- Hospital data manager
- Clinical lead (consultant)
- Orthopaedic trainees – we worked with a number of orthopaedic trainee networks (including the British Orthopaedic Trainee Association (BOTA), the British Elbow & Shoulder Society Trainees (BESS-T) and other regional orthopaedic trainee collaboratives) to identify orthopaedic trainees in each trust to support the audit.
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