Spine Plots

Here we present spine plots that allow Local Neonatal and Neonatal intensive care units to review their performance in select NNAP measures in a single compact diagram.

Performance on each measure is shown with a coloured disk positioned on a horizontal line for each measure. The line extends from the lowest to the highest value for that measure among all the Local Neonatal and Neonatal intensive care units. Local Neonatal units are shown with blue dots, while Neonatal intensive care units have pink dots. A black diamond represents the network rate for the network the presented unit belongs to.

The rates are scaled so that the national rates are aligned to a single vertical line for all measures and orientated so that better performance is to the right hand side. A grey bar describes the expected range - two standard deviations either side of the national rate, akin to a funnel plot. No standard deviations are presented for the nurse staffing measure.

The measures of “BPD or death” and “Mortality” are represented by ‘treatment effect’ – favourable outcomes are presented as a dot to the right of the line.

The measures are abbreviated as follows: ANS – antenatal steroids; MAG – magnesium sulphate; TMP – admission normothermia; CON – parental consultation; ROP – Ontime retinopathy of prematurity screening; BFD – breastmilk feeding at discharge; BFE – breastmilk feeding at 14 days; FLW – two year follow up; NST – number of shifts numerically staffed according to guidelines; BPD – bronchopulmonary dysplasia. For more details of these measures, please see the NNAP measures guide