Calling All Hip And Knee Surgeons - New Professional Guidance For Arthroplasty Documentation To Evidence Safe Clinical Practice

The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme is designed to improve healthcare practice, techniques and processes for the benefit of patients and to reduce litigation costs. As part of ongoing work with NHS Resolution, new guidance has been produced in association with the British Hip Society (BHS), British Association for Surgery of the Knee (BASK) and the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA).

The new Guidance is both concise and practical and illustrates a standard of practice that should be followed for surgical documentation in modern hip and knee arthroplasty in the UK. Sean Doherty, Healthcare Partner at DACB has worked with GIRFT as a contributor to this excellent new Guidance: "This has been a great project to be involved in and this new guidance should improve patient care and safety. In the longer term it should also lead to a reduction in the number of orthopaedic claims and a reduction in costs allowing valuable resources to focus on delivery of quality care."

IS YOUR TRUST KEEPING UP TO SPEED?

The cost of clinical negligence has been reported by the national audit office to be rising at a faster rate year on year than NHS funding, now representing over 2% of the annual budget. A GIRFT and NHS Resolution Orthopaedic Working Party worked with expert contributors including the BOA, BHS, BASK, NHS Patient Safety, NHS panel law firms, claimant law firms, expert witnesses and the medical defence organisations (MDU, MPS, MDDUS) with the goal of communicating lessons learned from previous and ongoing claims. A strategy was agreed to promote claims learning through GIRFT data packs provided to trusts and to produce best practice guidance, starting with hip and knee arthroplasty documentation.

A large series of hip and knee arthroplasty cases which involved claims to NHS Resolution were reviewed. Common themes concerning technique and...