by Mark Brandreth, NOA Lead CEO and
CEO of the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
As the new lead CEO for the National Orthopaedic Alliance (NOA), I am proud to be part of a group of organisations and people who are working to drive improvements in orthopaedic care nationwide. I’m pleased to have been given the opportunity to contribute a guest blog to ARMA’s newsletter to share an update on our work with you. At Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital (RJAH), our work with the NOA, and its vanguard work in particular, is vital to our future – and to the future of orthopaedic care received by patients across the country.
Ultimately, the NOA wants to improve the services that its members provide and through the vanguard project, create a framework (or pathway) others can follow leading to consistent high quality care for patients across the country. The objectives of the vanguard are:
- Agree what good looks like in orthopaedics and set a formal quality standard for this
- Recruit, assess and support members
- Grow membership across the country to spread provision of consistent high quality care
- Support the development of Quality Standards by members
- Support the development of a quality assured system for orthopaedic care
Progress with the vanguard to date has been centred on mobilising and recruiting members to help build our orthopaedic quality standards. Development of these standards is well underway and once launched will help ensure that patients, no matter where they are treated receive the same quality of care and are looked after using the same evidence-based, reliable and safe processes.
The success of the NOA so far has been driven by input from members and we are ever grateful for their support. Just recently, members contributed to producing The NOA Short Guide to Clinical Coding for Clinicians – a useful guide to help address an area needing attention across many NOA member organisations. More detailed guidance, including the full NOA suite of standards will be available to members once the vanguard launches its quality standards.
I for one am proud to be part of this movement. If you want to find out more about the NOA vanguard work, I encourage you to read the latest newsletter here. You can also follow @NOA_Vanguard on Twitter.