Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government (1) how many National Clinical Audits and Patient Outcome Audits there are currently in NHS England under the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership; (2) what percentage of care costs and English disability adjusted life years these audits cover; and (3) which diseases currently have patient reported outcomes, and which will have by next year.

NHS England has advised that there are 38 projects currently within the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP) Portfolio, which are at different stages of the commissioning cycle and comprise of 30 National Clinical Audits (NCA) and six Clinical Outcome Review Programmes or Mortality Review Programmes.

The audits’ primary focus is not care costs or disability adjusted life years. The audits are predominately based upon National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) evidence-based guidelines, technology appraisals and quality standards. NICE takes into account both clinical and cost effectiveness (mainly Quality Adjusted Life Years) where appropriate, and the clinical evidence exists to enable this. The audits commissioned by NCAPOP use the NICE evidence-based outputs as a foundation for the metrics collected so that where possible the audits are based upon a sound pre-existing evidence base. The exception where care costs are investigated is health economic work undertaken by the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme.

The following NCAs include patient reported outcomes (PROMS):

- the National Audit of Psychosis, awarded in March 2017, will collect PROMs in year two of its contract (2018-19) and will likely report these at the end of 2019 as part of the annual report;

- the National Rheumatoid and Early Inflammatory Arthritis Audit, which ran from 2013 to 2016, collected data on PROMS (capturing disease activity and impact of disease). This audit has been recommissioned (contract commenced October 2017) and will once again incorporate PROMs. It is due to report in year two of its contract (2018-19);

- the National Ophthalmology Audit is undertaking a study to examine the feasibility of collecting cataract PROMs data. This will likely be published in 2018-19;

- the National Bowel Cancer Audit has undertaken a study to examine the feasibility of reporting PROMs. This is expected to be published later in 2017; and

- the National Prostate Cancer Audit has collected PROMs data, which is likely to be reported in 2018. The project is being recommissioned and there is currently provision for a national collection of PROMs and patient reported experience measure data within year three of the new contract (2020-21).