The Scottish Arthroplasty Project (SAP) aims to encourage continual improvement in the quality of care provided to joint replacement surgery (arthroplasty) patients. This is currently achieved through the auditing of routinely collected SMR01 national data in Scotland.
SAP provides feedback to orthopaedic consultants in three ways:
• Consultants are sent a list of arthroplasty patients recorded as undergoing joint replacement surgery under their care, so that the consultant can check that the right information has been submitted to SAP.
• An national report is produced, which includes national information about the number of hip and knee joint replacements being performed and information at an NHS Board level.
• SAP's work is discussed at the Scottish Committee for Orthopaedics and Trauma (SCOT) and new developments are presented to orthopaedic surgeons at the annual SCOT meeting.
The Scottish Arthroplasty Project now produces national reports on a biennial basis, in order to allow developmental work on closer analyses of Scottish arthroplasty data. The 2012 national report is available here:
Scottish Arthroplasty Project Biennial Report 2012
All previous reports are available to download here.