GIRFT data on anaesthesia and perioperative care added to NHS Model Health System

Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) data for anaesthesia and perioperative medicine has now been published on the NHS Model Health System (MHS). The data can help NHS teams increase their day surgery rates and reduce patients’ length of stay.

Users can register at the Model Health System website and navigate to the GIRFT clinical metrics compartment for anaesthesia and perioperative medicine. Existing account holders can login in here.

The new metrics are drawn from the GIRFT national report for anaesthesia and perioperative medicine, which was shared with NHS teams across England in 2021. The report recommended that perioperative and surgical teams should take responsibility for driving and delivering a culture of day case as the default option for many procedures, to significantly increase rates and help tackle the surgical backlog resulting from COVID-19.

GIRFT’s data aligns closely with the metrics and standards set by the British Association of Day Surgery (BADS), reflecting the collaborative relationship between the two organisations. In 2020, together with the Centre for Perioperative Care, they jointly published a National Day Surgery Delivery Pack, building on the learning from best practice day surgery pathways to enable trusts to safely expand the amount of day surgery they undertake.

The new MHS compartment features more than 100 cross-cutting metrics to support improvement across the three pathways – day case, elective and emergency surgery. Clinical, trust and system users can see their performance in areas such as the percentage of emergency and non-elective patients receiving surgery on the day of their admission and the length of stay for patients over 70. Frailty, deprivation and co-morbidity information is also included.