The Scottish National Audit Programme (SNAP) governance process provides a framework for identifying where patient outcomes and performance may be significantly different in individual hospitals and mandates investigation to better understand why this may be the case. The responses from these investigations, for hospitals appearing more than three standard deviations (SD) from the Scottish mean, are included below in each chart.
For more information regarding the SNAP Governance policy please email the SNAP mailbox at phs.snap@phs.scot
The SAP has chosen to include complications for both primary hip and knee procedures in this process. These are:
Please note, more details on all outlier charts can be found in the main report.
The Scottish Arthroplasty Project (SAP) provides quality assurance for the Scottish population and allows surgeons to monitor their surgical outcomes in terms of key performance indicators. As part of the clinical governance process, it is recognised that some surgeons may have results that fall out with the main body of practice, and in these situations, it is important to analyse, in a collegiate manner, the reason for this. It is recognised that surgeons will have different patient populations and different scopes of practice. The purpose of the outlier process is to provide robust clinical governance and to advise and support surgeons.
Please download the SAP Outlier Process document (PDF) [176Kb] for detailed information on this process.
In 2010 we started using CUSUM methodology (CUmulative SUM of outcomes) to allow us to identify unusual runs of complications more quickly. Download the CUSUM information (PDF) [28Kb] for more details.