All subscribers to NEQOS have the advantage of access to our team of expert analysts and clinical epidemiologists for advice on quality measurement queries. We can be contacted by telephone or e-mail and aim to get back to callers within 24 hours to discuss their query.
An example of how the NEQOS Advisory Service has helped and benefited one of our subscribers:
One of our subscribers had been approached by a pharmaceutical company concerning the possible under-utilisation of one of its drugs for prophylaxis of severe bronchiolitis in extremely premature infants. The subscriber wanted to assess the extent of the condition which the drug is intended to prevent, and therefore wanted an estimate of the number of admissions to hospital in the North East and North Cumbria area for Respiratory Syncytial Virus bronchiolitis per year.
NEQOS approached this problem with a two stage approach. The first stage was to conduct a literature review into the topic, to identify any publications of note. This highlighted only one paper, published 28 years beforehand, a copy of this was supplied to the subscriber.
To get more recent data covering the whole of the North East and North Cumbria, NEQOS used our Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database which contains details for every admission to hospital in England for about the last decade. Diagnoses are coded in this database using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) codes. NEQOS identified the ICD-10 codes in question and provided data for the last three financial years to the subscriber.
This sort of support from the NEQOS Advisory Service is available immediately to all our subscribers.