The National Prostate Cancer Audit (NPCA) provides information on the care and outcomes of men diagnosed with prostate cancer in England and Wales. It determines whether the care provided by NHS hospitals meets current recommendations. It also compares care outcomes among NHS hospitals.
The NPCA’s aim is to stimulate and support national and local quality improvement interventions and – through re-auditing – assess the impact of these interventions.
The NPCA works with NHS hospitals identified as potential outliers (where performance is outside defined acceptable limits). Information is fed back to clinical teams providing an opportunity for the hospitals to review the completeness and accuracy of their data and to explore possible causes and respond formally. Where potential outlying performance is identified, this is escalated within the hospital so that an improvement plan can be developed and implemented putting mechanisms in place to correct problems where they exist.
The NPCA team also provide these results to other national quality improvement endeavours such as the National Clinical Audit Benchmarking initiative which supports Care Quality Commission hospital inspections.
The following cases studies demonstrate how the results from the NPCA and the outlier process act as a driver for quality improvement.
Further case studies will be added highlighting how NHS hospitals whose performance is outside acceptable limits or better than the national average are using the results from the NPCA to drive improvement.
Severe genitourinary complications post-surgery case study (255kB pdf)
Patient-reported urinary incontinence post-surgery case study (242kB pdf)