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Research

Surgeons operating on a patient

One of our key aims is to research how best to use administrative databases to inform how the NHS is performing both overall but also at the level of hospital, surgeon and within primary care. Challenges that we tackle include how to best process these complex data sets, indicator development, risk adjustment, statistical monitoring and feeding back results to NHS stakeholders.

Research themes

Patient safety

Our work in this area focuses on developing indicators of safety using large databases for both hospitals and GPs, with the recognition that a change in one behaviour, such as antibiotic prescribing, could have negative consequences as well as benefits.

Find out more

Effective use of patient data

This work is directly related to evaluating or informing healthcare policy and practice working with clinicians to develop indicators, and investigating how hospitals use our information and what is the most effective way to present the results to clinicians and hospital managers.

Find out more

Healthcare performance

One of our key aims is to research how best to use administrative databases to inform how the NHS is performing both overall but also at the level of hospital, surgeon and within primary care.

Find out more

Research

  • Patient safety
    • Antimicrobial Resistance in Healthcare Associated Infections: Infection Surveillance
    • Monitoring the unintended consequences of prescribing fewer antibiotics
    • Patient safety indicators for hospitals
    • Using primary care data to produce indicators of patient safety
    • Complications following orthopaedic surgery
    • Impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the quality and safety of hospital care
  • Effective use of patient data
    • Risks of having non-obstetric surgery during pregnancy
    • How hospitals use mortality alerts
  • Healthcare performance
    • Explaining variations in readmission, A&E use and mortality in patients with heart failure or COPD
    • International comparisons of hospital performance: the Global Comparators Initiative
    • National hospital performance surveillance system
Department of Primary Care and Public Health

Privacy notice

The Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London uses your health information for a number of purposes. The Dr Foster Unit GDPR Privacy Notice (PDF) provides a summary of how we use your information.

by Paul Aylin and Alex Bottle

Statistical Methods for Healthcare Performance Monitoring
A book for those measuring, monitoring, comparing and improving healthcare performance

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