Heartbeat: Trust bowel-ed over by national cancer audit results

May 15, 2020

The National Bowel Cancer Audit publishes results about the care and outcomes of patients with bowel cancer in England and Wales. Commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership as part of the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme, this quality improvement programme has been running for several years. It is delivered jointly by the Clinical Effectiveness Unit at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, NHS Digital, and the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland.

Each year, a report is produced for trusts in England and multidisciplinary teams in Wales. Our most recent results published for 2017-2018 show that we included more patients than expected and we performed positively in several areas.

Mr Torrance, Colorectal Consultant remarked, “Our data collection is significantly better than it has been in the past and that has allowed us to share that we are performing above average compared to our local peers and nationally in most measures. We stood out in the rate of major surgery performed in potentially curative patients. Whilst the national score was 86 per cent, we scored 92 per cent – 6 per cent above the national average.

We also perform significantly more cases through keyhole surgery compared to the rest of the country, with 89 per cent attempted through keyhole surgery compared to 69 per cent nationally. When we combined this with our enhanced recovery programme supported by our anaesthetic colleagues, ward staff and clinical nurse specialist team, we have helped nearly half of patients go home within 5 days of major surgery compared to the national average of just over a third of patients.”

When discussing how we’ve achieved these results, Dr Torrance commented, “We have invested in our data and wanted to show just how well we’re performing as a Trust. We now have a dedicated person responsible for managing our data. Tahira Sani from our cancer services team has done a great job at collating all of our data and allowing us to show just how well we’re performing, both regionally and nationally.”

Speaking to Heartbeat, Tahira commented, “I have taken on the task of compiling our clinical data. This involves collating data from lots of different sources including systems and meeting notes. I was pleased to see how well we performed as a Trust in comparison to others locally and nationally.”