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Quarterly Bulletin December
2001 http://home.drfoster.co.uk/consultant/ This new Web service allows health consumers to find information on
every hospital consultant in the UK. The Consultant Guide can be searched
in one of four ways: Dr Foster worked with City University to identify leading experts in their fields. Experts were identified by looking to see who had published the greatest numbers of high quality research papers. Named experts are listed for a number of disciplines including arthritis, colorectal cancer, multiple sclerosis and stroke. Though referral to any consultant still has be made through your GP, this new Web service enables consumers to see the qualifications their consultant has, what their specialist interests are and by linking into the Good Hospital Guide find out about the hospital they work in. This site is certainly worth exploring. National Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths (NCEPOD) http://www.ncepod.org.uk/2001.htm The National Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths (NCEPOD) is a registered charity whose aim is to review clinical practice and identify potentially remediable factors in the practice of anaesthesia, surgery and other invasive medical procedures. The aim is to look at the quality of the delivery of care and not specifically the causation of death. The latest report 'Changing the way we operate' deals with the care of patients who died in hospital between 1st April 1999 and 31st March 2000 within 30 days of a surgical procedure. Particular questions were asked where there was a diagnosis of cancer at the time of death. The inquiry describes cancer services as 'haphazard', and says even specialist centres do not provide the care patients require. The full report is available on the Web and has been split into sections for easy downloading. Note: The report is published as a PDF file. To read this you will need a copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader available free of charge at: http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readstep.html Net
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