Benjamin Bridgewater

Overview

Ben Bridgewater is a consultant cardiac surgeon at the University Hospital of South Manchester and Honorary Professor at Manchester Academic Health Science Centre. He leads the programme to collect, analyse and publish data on cardiac surgical outcomes in the UK and runs an active research programme  which develops methodologies for analysis and applies the data to hypothesis testing. In March 2013, Ben was been appointed as the Director of Outcomes Publication at the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership, to deliver the publication of clinical outcomes for 12 surgical specialties and interventional cardiology on behalf of NHS England. He was nominated by the HSJ as one of the top 50 innovators in health in the UK in 2013 & 2014. In 2016 Ben left the NHS to join CSC (now DXC.technology) as their Director of Healthcare Strategy in UKI and the Netherlands.

Biography

Ben trained in medicine at St Mary’s, Paddington, and decided at an early stage to pursue a career in cardiac surgery. He undertook a PhD at the Brompton Hospital whilst an SHO  focussing on experimental studies and mathematical modelling of inert gas exchange kinetics. After returning to clinical practice he applied these experiences to collecting and analysing cardiac surgical outcomes data, setting up the Northwest Quality Improvement programme in Cardiac Interventions in 1998 (this won the Health Services Journal award for best quality improvement programme in 2003), and then taking over responsibility for the national programme from Sir Bruce Keogh in 2005. The Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons in GB and Ireland subsequently won the BMJ award for best quality improvement programme in 2009 for this work, which has been associated with a greater than 50% reduction in risk adjusted operative mortality over recent years.

Ben is also seconded on a part time basis to UCL where he is a clinical lead at the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR), an organisation which has been established to develop and optimise the potential of the cardiac national clinical audit programme.

Ben has developed increasing links with Prof Iain Buchan and the team at the Northwest Institute for Bio-Health Informatics where he is developed better models for data feedback to drive quality improvement, refining methods of risk analysis and reporting, and establishing a national network of researchers to add value to cardiac surgical national audit data.

As part of Ben’s interest in the use of clinical outcomes data, he has become increasingly interested in the role of this type of information for regulatory purposes and particularly how focus on quality of care though outcomes can modify doctors attitudes to medical professionalism.

In 2013 Ben took a role for the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) as Director of Outcomes Publication to support the wider publication of outcomes across surgery and interventional cardiology in response to the NHS England anouncement in ''Everyone Counts''.

In 2016 Ben left the NHS to pursue his interests in using data and digital tranformation to improve outcomes for patients and the health economy through CSC (now DXC.technology) as their Director of Healthcare Strategy in UKI and the Netherlands.