Identifying potentially low value surgical care: A national ecological study in England.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

High variation in clinical practice may indicate uncertainty and potentially low-value care. Methods to identify low value care are often not well defined or transparent and can be time intensive. In this paper we explore the usefulness of variation analysis of routinely-collected data about surgical procedures in England to identify potentially low-value surgical care.

Methods

This is a national ecological study using Hospital Episode Statistics linked to mid-year population estimates and indices of multiple deprivation in England, 2014/15-2018/19. We identified the top 5% of surgical procedures in terms of growth in standardised procedure rates for 2014/15 to 2018/19 and variation in procedure rates between clinical commissioning groups as measured by the system

SUBMITTER: Jones T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11346124 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature