Bungled hip replacements…

Civitas, 1 October 2009

Last week The Times published an article with the juicy headline ‘NHS paying high price for bungled hip replacements at private centres’.  The problem is that the article refers to a study in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery Standards of just one centre; a centre in Weston-super-Mare within an NHS hospital.  It is true, standards of care here were clearly inadequate, but it is equally wrong to generalise.  As this blog reported a few weeks ago, here and here, patient satisfaction surveys and the one comprehensive clinical audit (by the RCSEng and LSHTM) of fully-fledged ISTCs show quality to be as good if not higher than in the NHS; a finding supported by data used by the Healthcare Commission in their report on them.

There are, however, problems with data comparability.  It will be good news when the NHS Partners’ Network’s HELLENIC project is off the ground and enables direct comparison between all independent centres and the NHS, whence a fair picture will no doubt emerge.