The National Joint Registry for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man is a database containing details of all primary and revision total hip, knee, shoulder, elbow and ankle replacement procedures carried out in NHS and independent sector hospitals in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. Primary hip replacement has its own specific dataset for procedures. Initially this data is collected during a patient's time at hospital as part of bespoke data collection to support the NJR . This is submitted to NEC Software Solutions (contracted to the NJR) for processing and is used to monitor the quality and safety of patient care and outcomes. This same data can also be processed and used for non-clinical purposes, such as research and planning health services. Because these uses are not to do with direct patient care, they are called 'secondary uses'. This is the NJR research ready data set. NJR data covers all procedures carried out in NHS and independent sector hospitals in England, Wales (from 2003), Northern Ireland (from 2013), the Isle of Man (from 2015) and the States of Guernsey (from 2019). Each NJR record contains a wide range of information about an individual patient treated at an NHS or independent sector hospital, including: • clinical information about surgical indications and operations • patient information, such as age group and gender • component information, such as the brand and size of prosthesis used • outcomes, such as whether a revision procedure has been undertaken NJR apply a strict statistical disclosure control in accordance with the NHS Digital protocol, to all published NJR data. This suppresses small numbers to stop people identifying themselves and others, to ensure that patient confidentiality is maintained. Who NJR data is for NJR can provide data for the purpose of healthcare analysis to the NHS, government and others including: • national bodies and regulators, such as the Department of Health, NHS England, Public Health England, NHS Improvement and the CQC • local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) • provider organisations • government departments • researchers and commercial healthcare bodies • National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) • patients, service users and carers • the media Uses of the statistics The statistics are known to be used for: • national policy making • benchmarking performance against other hospital providers or CCGs
• academic research • analysing service usage and planning change • providing advice to ministers and answering a wide range of parliamentary questions • national and local press articles • international comparison More information can be found at http://www.njrcentre.org.uk/njrcentre/