Hospital episode statistics: improving the quality and value of hospital data: a national internet e-survey of hospital consultants

Hypothesis: Senior hospital clinicians are poorly engaged with clinical coding and hospital episode statistics (HES). Aims: To understand the current level of clinical engagement with collection of national data and clinical coding. To gain the views of frontline staff on proposed improvements to hospital statistics. To gain an indication of likely clinical engagement in change. To understand the clinical priority for improvement. Design: Internet e-survey accessible from Academy of Royal Medical College Website. Setting: National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. Participants: 1081 NHS hospital consultants and two general practitioners who volunteered to take part. Results: 3.4% of the sample regularly access HES data; 21% are regularly involved in clinical coding and 6.2% meet coding staff at least monthly. 95% would like to access HES data and there was a strong support for using this data for appraisal, revalidation and improving the quality of patient care. In terms of improvements, 91.9% would be prepared to code diagnosis in outpatients given the right tools. The highest priority for improvement is clinical validation of diagnostic data. Conclusions: Clinical engagement with coding and access to HES data is poor. However, there is professional support for improvement. Clinical requirements should be considered in all future developments of national data collection to provide the quality and scope of data that is required to deliver the information revolution.