Surgeons in 10 specialties in the NHS in England will be ranked in new league tables covering survival rates of patients and quality of care from next year, the NHS Commissioning Board has announced.

In its planning guidance for 2013-14, published this week, the board set out plans for healthcare providers to publish consultant level data for specialties including adult cardiac, vascular, and orthopaedic surgery by summer 2013.1

Results for individual cardiothoracic surgeons have been published since 2005, because the specialty was prompted to collect the data by the publication of the Kennedy report into children’s heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary.

Publication of data from surgeons in a wider group of specialties will become a contractual obligation from 2014-15 to allow comparison across hospitals. Information on interventional cardiology, upper gastrointestinal, colorectal, bariatric, urological, head and …