NAoMe FAQs

The National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer (NAoMe) evaluates patterns of care and outcomes for people diagnosed diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in NHS hospitals in England and Wales. It includes  those with metastatic disease at presentation and those with recurrent disease. The audit aims to improve data completeness to ensure all patients living with metastatic breast cancer are counted, to identify variations in care and to support NHS services to identify and address areas for improvement.

The National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer (NAoMe) is delivered by the National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NATCAN), part of the Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU) at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The audit is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) and funded by NHS England and the Welsh Government.

The project team works with the NAoMe clinical leads, Dr. David Dodwell, Dr. Mark Verrill and Prof. Kieran Horgan (surgical), alongside an Audit Advisory Committee and Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Forum. These groups include representatives from professional and patient organisations and help ensure the audit meets the needs of the metastatic breast cancer community.

Data are drawn from national registries, including the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in England and the Wales Cancer Network (WCN).

There are several ways to keep up with our work. You can subscribe to our quarterly newsletter, get in touch at [email protected], or follow us on the following platforms: Bluesky and LinkedIn. 

National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer (NAoMe) publishes an annual State of the Nation (SotN) report, which provides information on the care received by people diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) in England and Wales. It is the audit’s annual assessment of NHS breast services, sharing examples of good practice and highlighting where care needs to improve.

The SotN report includes performance indicators drawn from the Quality Improvement Plan (QIP), which sets out the audit scope, care pathway and five quality improvement (QI) goals. Findings from the report lead to five national recommendations aligned to these QI goals, highlighting where improvements in care are needed.

The SotN report is supported by a dedicated data dashboard, that allows NHS providers and Cancer Alliances to explore their own data and benchmark results.

In addition, clinical reports covering a subset of performance indicators and data quality metrics are published through an online quarterly data dashboard. Data from the Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset (RCRD) are used to provide NHS organisations in England (NHS trusts and Cancer Alliances) with frequent feedback on organisational performance.

The National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer (NAoMe) defines metastatic breast cancer (MBC) as breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast and regional lymph nodes. In this audit, people with MBC have been categorised as either de novo or recurrent. People are referred to as de novo if metastatic disease was identified at the time of their initial breast cancer diagnosis and recurrent if they were identified to have metastatic disease at least 6 months after their initial diagnosis of primary breast cancer.

Yes, the NAoMe Patient and Public State of the Nation Report is published in October. The report was developed in collaboration with the NAoMe patient and public involvement (PPI) Forum and aims to make the audit’s results and key findings accessible and understandable to a wider audience. 

Yes, the NAoMe is included in the NHS England Quality Accounts list.

For the annual State of the Nation (SotN) reports the indicator definitions are provided in the accompanying methodology supplement which provides detailed information about the
audit’s data sources and methods.

For the NAoMe data dashboard, indicator definitions can be found in the “Indicator information” tab for each selected indicator. NHS organisations are also encouraged to review the “Methods” tab for further details on the underlying methodologies. 

The NAoMe reports findings at national (England and Wales), NHS organisation (English NHS trusts and Welsh NHS health boards) and regional Cancer Alliance level. Data are available at each of these levels via the data tables that support the annual State of the Nation publications and the NAoMe data dashboards.

The NAoMe list of Key Data Items submitted via Cancer Outcomes and Services Data set (COSD) is intended to help members of the breast cancer multidisciplinary team (MDT) enter the data items used by the audit to produce the indicators it reports on.

Additionally, the NAoMe guide to collecting COSD data for breast cancer recurrence was designed in collaboration with the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), with the purpose of facilitating and encouraging the recording of recurrence at multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meetings in the Cancer Outcomes and Services Data set (COSD).

The NAoMe quarterly data dashboard is updated in January, April, July and October. You can also refer to the “Update” tab on the dashboard itself, which displays the date of the next scheduled release.

Our annual State of the Nation report is scheduled for publication in September. To receive updates on the latest reports, you can subscribe to the Audit’s newsletter, get in touch at [email protected],  and follow us on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/naome-natcan.bsky.social and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/naome-natcan. 

The NAoMe Guide to collecting COSD data was designed with clinicians in mind, in collaboration with the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) – NHS Digital, with the purpose of facilitating and encouraging the recording of recurrence at multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meetings in the Cancer Outcomes and Services Data set (COSD).