Blackrock Clinic is the First Private Irish Hospital to Participate in the Irish National Orthopaedic Register

4th Nov 2020

All orthopaedic implants and related components to be recorded

Blackrock Clinic is the first private hospital in Ireland to participate in the Irish National Orthopaedic Register (“INOR”).  Provision of data to this register is in line with Blackrock Clinic’s ongoing commitment to the highest quality standards in healthcare provision. 

The INOR is an electronic system which records and monitors all elective hip and knee joint replacement procedures performed in participating hospitals.  It tracks implant performance and patient outcomes, while recording adverse incidents and surgical revision rates.  It also provides continuous feedback to patients and to participating centres and surgeons. 

The INOR aims to improve the quality of services and care provided to patients having joint replacement surgery. By using patient scoring systems and recording implant performance and patient outcomes, INOR aims to monitor the safety of implants and support hospitals should an implant recall occur.

This quality programme is being delivered by senior physiotherapists at the Hospital who will perform all assessments and data collection. Each patient will be assessed prior to their procedure, again at 6 months, then at 2 years, and again every 5 years after that. 

INOR participation will allow the hospital to benchmark outcomes against national results and be part of audits from the National Office of Clinical Audit (“NOCA”) which provides reliable data through a portfolio of prioritised national clinical audits.

Blackrock Clinic invests €100,000 in assessments and collection of data

Participating in the INOR will cost the hospital approximately €100,000 per year and will provide long term data and patient reported outcome measures (PROMS). 

“Orthopaedic surgery is one of our areas of world class treatment,” said Chris Carr, Operations Manager, Orthopaedic, Spinal Surgery and Allied Therapy at Blackrock Clinic.  “Our participation in the INOR will allow us to measure our performance against other hospitals and ensure we continue to provide this high quality care.”

“Patient safety is paramount and a programme such as this means that if there is an implant recall, as there has been in the past, it will be very straight forward to identify affected patients from this register,” he said.

James O’Donoghue, CEO of Blackrock Clinic added:

“Patient outcomes in a number of specialities, including cardiac surgery, have been made available to our patients for many years.  Having similar orthopaedic data will be extremely valuable as it will enable the Hospital to assess and analyse the quality of orthopaedic care provided at Blackrock Clinic and will ensure that we will continue to provide orthopaedic surgery to the highest international standards”.