New graphs monitor hospital performance in angioplasty
Published: 24 April 2008
New research published in the British Medical Journal could help the public make an informed choice of hospitals and surgeons when undergoing coronary angioplasty.
The work was carried out by a research team from the James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough. They aimed to show that operator-specific outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) can be monitored using funnel plots and cumulative funnel plots.
Researchers produced graphs to monitor a surgeon’s performance, measured by perioperative rates of major adverse cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. The plots then showed graphically when this fell outside the predicted upper or lower limits.
Benefits to both professionals and public
Using this approach, hospitals and individual surgeons can monitor their own performance, using the predicted risk for their patients, but in a way that is compatible with benchmarking to colleagues.
It will also allow external monitoring of performance and help inform the public about outcome data for individual interventional institutions or cardiologists
Find out more: Cumulative funnel plots for the early detection of interoperator variation.