CUH wins national data quality award

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) has won the CHKS Top Hospitals programme Data Quality Award 2017. The CHKS Top Hospitals awards celebrate excellence throughout the UK and are given to acute sector organisations for their achievements in healthcare quality and improvement.

The Data Quality Award is a national award given in recognition of the importance of clinical coding and data quality, and the essential role they play in ensuring safe and appropriate patient care as well as appropriate financial reimbursement from commissioners.

Allison Rodgers, Head of Clinical Coding at CUH, said: “We are delighted that CUH has been recognised in this way for the quality of data we produce, based on the high quality of information we have about our patients. We’ve worked really hard as a Trust over the years to improve our data quality and accuracy of clinical coding, which has been aided by the implementation of our Epic electronic patient record system.

“Clinical coders no longer have to manually look through paper notes in every area of the Trust to interpret relevant information as clinicians now record all patient care and treatment in our Epic system, in real time. This has not only helped us to improve the quality of the information we have about the care and treatment provided to our patients, but it is helping us to code much more accurately, in a more efficient way, and subsequently submit high quality data to our commissioners.”

Dr Jag Ahluwalia, Medical Director and executive lead for IT at CUH, added: “This is a fantastic achievement which reflects the years of hard work from all our staff in improving the quality of data and the information we record about our patients’ care and safety across our hospitals. The quality of the data that we produce from our Epic system is only as good as the information our staff record in it. Winning this award really demonstrates the effective use and adoption of world-class technology at CUH in aiding the delivery of high quality patient care and the production of high quality data as a result. I would like to thank all of our staff and partners, in particular Epic, who have and continue to help CUH on this journey of improvement.”

CHKS, part of Capita Healthcare Decisions, has used over 27 years of experience in the analysis of hospital data to decide the indicators on which each of the Top Hospitals programme awards are judged. Awards are made on the basis of an analysis of publicly available datasets and every NHS acute trust in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is included.

Andy Lockwood, managing director, Capita Healthcare Decisions, said: “The staff and management team at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust should take pride in having won this award. It is made on the basis of analysis of impartial indicators and shows a real commitment to improving data quality which is the starting point for improving services for patients.”

The CHKS Top Hospitals programme awards were held in London on the 10th May and hosted by health policy analyst Roy Lilley alongside guest speaker Sir Ranulph Fiennes Bt OBE.