Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many hospital trusts (a) collect and (b) submit data on the number of people diagnosed with secondary breast cancer to the cancer outcomes and services data set.

140 hospital trusts submitted data for 2016 secondary breast cancer diagnoses through the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset or Cancer Waiting Times data collection mechanisms. The total number submitted was 11,608, which is an increase on 2014 and 2015. This is accepted as being significantly below the estimated number of secondary breast cancers.

The National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) has published a number of guidance documents including flowcharts and clearer data definitions, providing specific advice on how to record cancer patients who are on a non-primary pathway. NCRAS is visiting trusts to support the use of this guidance.

NCRAS is working closely with cancer charities to improve data collection and submission by hospital trusts, looking at how they can help improve completion rates and thus gain a better picture of the burden of recurrence and metastatic disease across the health service.

To further support this work NCRAS has been sharing provider-level data on the completeness of recurrence reporting with individual NHS trusts since July 2016. These data are publicly available at the following link:

http://www.ncin.org.uk/cancer_type_and_topic_specific_work/topic_specific_work/recurrence