Demystifying NHS data 

The NHS Information Centre director of information services Brian Derry is blunt in his opinion about 3D charts: they are “the first refuge of scoundrels. They don’t normally reveal anything; normally they only serve to hide information”.

NHS organisations and the staff working within them are often bogged down in meaningless data, statistics and information that either they do not understand or is irrelevant to them. To drive quality and improvement, access to meaningful data which can help inform both clinicians and managers about the state of services and practices and show where gains can be made will be central to the success of the NHS for the future.

In the South East the NHS South East Coast Observatory has been leading the way in trying to “demystify” data, for clinicians and other NHS staff across the region. Observatory head Samantha Riley says she was “shocked” that clinicians and boards within NHS organisations often did not have the evidence or data to back up what outcome would be achieved from any changes they had proposed to services.

“A lot of the work we produce allows organisations to benchmark themselves appropriately and most of the data is drawn from data sets already available, such as hospital episode statistics, Department of Health or Secondary Uses Service data” she explains.

Ms Riley says the problem with the way national data is presented is that it is in “huge whacking great tables” which can appear incomprehensible and irrelevant to staff.

“We focus on presenting data which makes it easy to come up with the right conclusions about services,” she says.

Clear and simple

The observatory aims to try to present information clearly and simply, make data visually appealing and often use time series to help benchmark performance.

Recently the team has also inputted into the leadership programme for NHS South East Coast, which has developed into specific sessions on demystifying data for clinicians.

In the South East the observatory has also recently worked with clinicians providing stroke services to show how local improvement programmes are having an impact in keeping stroke patients out of hospital and getting them of hospital more quickly.

“The clinicians have been really impressed with the information and other clinicians who are not stroke specialists have approached us to see if we can do the same for them,” Ms Riley says.

However, she cautions that when the team is asked to supply data it always asks what answers are being looked for. Mr Derry agrees and says that it is an important job to “separate out what people want from what they need and to spend time unpicking what is really important”.

He says the NHS must take the task of improving the data it presents about its performance seriously.

“If the NHS is committed to providing more information to patients and the public to help them understand services they will want that information presented in a way we are not used to.

“For staff, to show them how well they are performing and where they can do better they will also need a clear picture, which in turn will engage them to improve, rather than burying them in data where the best result you will get is a yawn.”