NVR COVID-19 Dataset—a request to complete NVR submissions in REAL TIME

Firstly I wanted to thank all clinicians, nurses and data clerks who have engaged with the new Covid-19 data fields that have been added to the NVR. The data has already identified important information on the impact of COVID-19 on vascular interventions. I would like to encourage everyone to complete patient data entry to the NVR in REAL TIME to discharge or death as far as possible. This will allow us to analyse the data and share this information quickly, and so help guide vascular surgeons and interventional radiologists to make safe and informed decisions with their patients.

We have already had a lot of positive feedback, but also some queries regarding the new Covid-19 questions, which I will respond to below.

1. Covid-19 questions for carotid procedures. We decided that following early VS advice that most symptomatic carotid patients would be treated medically that we did not need to add the Covid-19 questions to the carotid data set. However, some carotid surgery and stenting is being undertaken and we will therefore add the questions for carotid procedures in the next couple of weeks. They can be completed retrospectively.
2. With regards the question on timing of surgery. Please tick ‘Yes- no resources to schedule procedure’ if a patient’s admission has been delayed as a result of Covid-19.
3. The datasets record both death and Covid infection, however, not death from Covid. To capture this specifically (as requested by some members), we plan to link with ONS death registry data. For ONS linkage, it is vital that patient NHS numbers are recorded within the NVR and again we strongly encourage using this instead of hospital number.

Once again I am really grateful for how quickly clinicians, nurses and data clerks have engaged with these important additional data fields and would like to encourage collection of this important information to continue.

Mr Jonathan Boyle, Chair of Audit and QI Committee of VSGBI

Audit Quality Improvement Resources

We have developed a guide for exporting and analysing your hospital NVR data for lower limb revascularisation procedures, and producing basic metrics such as admission to procedure time. It can be used to monitor performance of local vascular services and for audit purposes.

We have also created a quality improvement resources page on our website, with links to online tools and examples of successful quality improvement projects in surgery.