Search
You are here: Dispensing Doctor Data » Sign up for NHS Comparators
Sign up for NHS Comparators
Now available on the internet
Dr Allan Tennant reports
4th of February 2010
An essential resource for comparative healthcare information, NHS Comparators is a free service that allows GPs to understand, benchmark and compare activity, outcomes and costs at a local, regional and national level. GPs can compare multiple aspects of how they measure up to their peers and identify where potential efficiency savings can be made.
Until recently you had to access NHS Comparators from your computer in the surgery, using the NHS network. Now you can log on from home. This service has only been available since the 18th of January 2010.
Currently data has been published up to quarter4 of 2008/09. So there is as yet no 2009/10 data, the delay is due to quality issues. The first two quarters of this financial year will be published this month.
NHS Comparators has around 6,500 users from across the NHS including nearly 1,000 GPs. More GPs are now being encouraged to register for the tool. There are currently around 200 different comparative indicators, covering over 30 consultant specialities including:
Emergency admission rates for a range of conditions
Quality and Outcomes data
Outpatient referrals
Maternity comparators including mode and method of delivery.
Data can be sorted by specific clinical conditions and where appropriate can be adjusted to reflect age and gender balance.
You can see the data for every practice in England.
Dr Mark Davies, GP and Medical Director of The NHS Information Centre says "NHS Comparators is a really useful tool for GPs as it can help us improve the quality of care delivered and make efficiency savings by benchmarking and comparing practice activity and costs against other practices in our PCT, or the national or SHA average. GPs who do not use statistical tools like NHS Comparators will miss out as you are in a knowledge vacuum if you do not know what your peers are doing and how you compare"
Dr Ian Greaves, a Staffordshire GP whose practice developed a new strategic partnership with their local acute trust after NHS comparators revealed that their practice referred many more asthma sufferers than average for hospital admissions, says "The NHS Comparators site enabled us to map and plan how we could change from a hospital based to a community based service. We felt that the high number of admissions could be avoided if urgent care services were better so we agreed with the trust to bring those services here to the practice." Read on to learn more about how NHS Comparators helped Dr Ian Greaves.
Previously available on the NHS N3 network, NHS Comparators has now being rolled out to the World Wide Web so anyone with a standard internet connection (www) can apply for access. The site is designed to be easy to use by anyone without requiring any training or statistical experience. Free online demos are available to help get new users started.
For more information and to register for the free tool, GPs can visit, call 0845 300 6016 or email enquiries@ic.nhs.uk