Following the opening of the Research & Outcomes Centre at the London Sports Orthopaedic practice, Ian McDermott discusses the importance of clinical research and data gathering in today’s modern practice
Most people would tend to associate research with labs and with universities. However, research underpins the very essence of modern evidence-based clinical practice, and a thorough knowledge and understanding of research is essential for maintaining the most modern and up-to-date patient care with the latest technologies.
To-date, it has always been particularly difficult to set up and run clinical research projects within the independent healthcare sector, and even robust clinical audit and outcomes data has proved hard to obtain. The advent of PHIN (the Private Healthcare Information Network) is a meaningful and positive outcome from the CMA’s attempt at improving competition and ‘customer care’ within the private sector. For years, people have talked about how difficult it is to gather outcomes data and to make a meaningful assessment of ‘quality’ within healthcare. However, with PHIN now being legally mandated to gather data from the independent healthcare sector, there is finally a much-needed incentive that is now forcing people to take data collection far more seriously.
While we fully support PHIN’s endeavours, what has become very clear to all involved is that the task that PHIN took on far exceeds what it initially appeared prepared for. After a period of what appeared to be some resistance from some professional organisations and registries with respect to the sharing of confidential data, it now looks as if PHIN are slowly gaining ground and momentum. However, the scope of its remit and the extent of the dataset being gathered is, inevitably, somewhat limited, and whether PHIN will actually be able to provide meaningful data that truly differentiates between the quality of care provided by different centres or by different individual consultants, or how long it might take to achieve this, remains to be seen.
What is clear, however, is that the culture of data gathering and of data sharing, when it comes to clinical outcomes, is now established, and this is something that those consultants with a clear sense for improvement will want to embrace and engage with, rather than remaining passive and just relying on faceless name