The purpose of the National Ovarian Cancer Audit (NOCA) is to evaluate the patterns of care and outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer in England and Wales, and to support services to improve the quality of care for these patients.
NOCA is part of the National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NATCAN), the home of the ten national cancer audits in England and Wales. This national centre of excellence was established to strengthen cancer services by evaluating the process of diagnosis and treatment, and patient outcomes in multiple cancer sites.
This is the first quarterly report published by NOCA. The quarterly report provides an overview of the quality of key data items from Rapid Cancer Registration Data (RCRD) for 6,475 patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer in England between 1st October 2022 and 30th September 2023. The cohort comprises a broad definition of ovarian cancer using RCRD supplied by the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) for the following ICD10 codes: C56 ovarian cancer, C57 fallopian tube cancer, C48 primary peritoneal cancer after excluding sarcomas, and D391 cancer of the ovary of uncertain or unknown behaviour.
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NOCA Quarterly Report, October 2022 to September 2023
Why do these reports focus on data completeness/quality?
This quarterly report focusses on data completeness of key data items as this aspect of data quality underpins what NOCA can reliably and robustly report as an audit. The specific data completeness items were chosen in collaboration with the audit’s clinical and methodological experts. Going forward, the team will continue development work, in consultation with stakeholders, to determine which performance indicators are appropriate for quarterly reporting using the RCRD. These future performance indicators are likely to concern the ovarian cancer patient diagnostic pathway, treatments and outcomes.
What routine national data has been used to produce this Quarterly Report?
In England, NATCAN receives information from the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS), part of the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), NHS England. NDRS collects patient-level data from all NHS acute providers on patients with cancer using a range of national data-feeds. This includes the Cancer Registration datasets and the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset (COSD). COSD data are submitted to the NDRS monthly via Multidisciplinary Team electronic data collection systems. Clinical sign-off of data submitted to NDRS is not mandated in England. The information held in the registration dataset is compiled from a number of sources.
For this first quarterly report, the NOCA utilised data from the Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset (RCRD). This dataset is compiled mainly from COSD records and is made available more quickly than the complete cancer registration dataset. However, the speed of production means that the range of data items is limited and several standard data items in the complete registration dataset are unavailable. It also does not have complete coverage of all patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer in England during the reporting period. The datasets were received by NATCAN in February 2024 and contained patient data submitted to NDRS by English NHS trusts for patients diagnosed between 1st October 2022 and 30th September 2023.
Further information about the RCRD can be found here.
This NOCA report allocates patients to NHS organisations based on the “trust at diagnosis” recorded within the RCRD dataset.
Please note: the total number of patients from which the Cancer Alliance and NHS trust figures were derived is less than the total number of patients used for the national figures. This is because not all patients had a trust of diagnosis in the RCRD data.
For any queries relating to the audit, please email: [email protected]
Last updated: 15 July 2024, 11:03am