Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the frequency of the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme's (a) clinical and (b) organisational audit.

The Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP) is part of the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme, which is commissioned and managed by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) on behalf of NHS England. The Department has therefore had no discussions with HQIP on the funding allocated to SSNAP.

Up until now, SSNAP has reported every three months. However, the last quarterly report was published in June and SSNAP will report three times a year from now on, with the next report expected in October/November 2016. 100% of all hospitals treating acute stroke patients submit data to SSNAP and it is estimated that around 95% of all stroke patients have their data entered.

The following link provides further information on SSNAP:

https://www.strokeaudit.org/results/Organisational.aspx

The only other audit relevant to stroke is the audit conducted by the Vascular Society on people who have carotid artery surgery, which can be found at:

https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/carotid-interventions-audit-cia

There are no other national audits relevant to stroke patients.