National Bowel Cancer Audit 2015

Making clinical audit data transparent In his transparency and open data letter to Cabinet Ministers on 7 July 2011, the Prime Minister made a commitment to make clinical audit data available from the national audits within the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme. The information available from this webpage comes from the National Bowel Cancer Audit. The Audit covers Strategic Clinical Networks and NHS Trusts in England and Wales. What information is being made available?  Audit participation by NHS Trust and data completeness for the key fields  Measures about the process of care given to patients  Information about care outcomes and treatment. These data do not list individual patient information nor do they contain any patient identifiable data. Using and interpreting the data Data from the National Bowel Cancer Audit requires careful interpretation, and the information should not be looked at in isolation when assessing standards of care. Data are provided by place of surgery in secondary care for the period 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014. Tertiary cancer centres that mainly provide oncological treatment for bowel cancer patients have been excluded from some measures, such as case ascertainment as their patients would typically be diagnosed elsewhere. Accessing the data The data are being made available on the data.gov website. Each year files of data from the National Bowel Cancer Audit will be made available in CSV format. Trusts and Networks are identified by name and their national code. What does the data cover? The data measure levels of completeness for data submitted to the National Bowel Cancer Audit and measures of performance in the audit at trust level for key performance measures for assessing standards of care for bowel cancer in secondary care. Details of the methodology can be found in the supportive document of the National Bowel Cancer Audit Report 2015. Are all Trusts included? All Trusts in England that manage patients diagnosed with bowel cancer are included. What period does the data cover? This data covers patients with a date of diagnosis between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014. Specific data measures may apply to a more relevant subgroup of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer.