Leading orthopaedic centre of excellence The Horder Centre has been named as among the UK’s best providers in an influential hospital guide.
The Dr Foster Hospital Guide is an independent and highly respected annual report that details improvements and trends across the healthcare sector.
For the first time, the Dr Foster Hospital Guide includes independent healthcare providers, such as The Horder Centre in Crowborough, in its assessment of treatment for hip and knee replacements. Previously it only assessed NHS hospitals.
The report highlights that while the independent sector accounts for just 3% of all elective NHS surgery; it performed 15% of the 147,000 NHS elective hip and knee replacements in the last financial year.
More than 96% of people treated at The Horder Centre are NHS patients, referred through Patient Choice, which allows people to ask their GP to send them to a specific hospital.
Diane Thomas, Chief Executive of The Horder Centre, said: “The Dr Foster Hospital Guide is respected nationally as a highly credible source of crucial information about the healthcare sector. So it is tremendously rewarding to be named in the guide as one of the country’s best providers.
“The Horder Centre demonstrates how independent specialist providers can work with the NHS to provide superb outcomes through reduced waiting times, low emergency re-admissions and less need for procedures to be repeated.
“As a centre of excellence, we pride ourselves on providing the very best orthopaedic care in a clean, safe and friendly environment, and we are thrilled this commitment has been recognised by the Dr Foster team.”
Dr Foster looked across three key indicators of quality for both elective hip and knee replacements including the number of patients who spent long periods in hospital, the number of emergency readmissions within 28 days of the operation and the proportion of repeated procedures within a year.
The Horder Centre, as a good performing provider, have fewer long stay patients, lower emergency readmissions and lower revision rates.
All patients requiring an elective orthopaedic procedure or needing a referral to a Consultant Rheumatologist or Consultant Pain Specialist have the right to choose The Horder Centre, paid for by the NHS.
In the financial year up to July 2011, The Horder Centre welcomed over 25,000 patient visits.
To read the Dr Foster Hospital Guide 2011, click here.
