The purpose of the National Pancreatic Cancer Audit (NPaCA) is to evaluate the patterns of care and outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer in England and Wales, and to support services to improve the quality of care for these patients. More details of the audit aims and scope can be found on our webpage.
This is the first quarterly report published by the NPaCA team and provides an overview of the quality of key data items captured in the rapid cancer registration data for people diagnosed in NHS trusts with pancreatic cancer in England between 1st October 2022 and 30th September 2023, at NHS trust and Cancer Alliance levels. A high-level summary of patient characteristics is also provided at NHS trust and Cancer Alliance levels.
This first quarterly report, and the next one published in July, focuses on data quality. The subsequent quarterly reports will report on performance indicators relevant to pancreatic cancer. These first quarterly reports on data quality are intended to highlight to Trusts where data submissions to the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset (COSD) could be improved to enable better reporting on performance indicators in the future.
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NPaCA Quarterly Report, October 2022 to September 2023
Why have we focused on data completeness?
We have initially focused on data completeness as this aspect of data quality underpins what we can reliably and robustly report as an audit. 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 people 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 on a monthly basis 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.
Data sources used in this report:
For this quarterly report, the NPaCA utilised data from the Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset (RCRD). This is the first time this data has been reported on for NPaCA. 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 pancreatic cancer in England during the reporting period. For more information regarding the RCRD, including the data dictionary, visit the RCRD webpage maintained by NHS England. The dataset was received by NATCAN in February 2024 and contained patient data submitted to NDRS by English NHS trusts for people diagnosed between 1st January 2018 and 31st October 2023.
The period of 1st October 2022 to 30th September 2023 was selected for reporting data quality as it covers the most recent complete four quarters of data (Q4 2022 to Q3 2023). Results are reported for this one year period, rather than quarterly, to ensure sufficiently large numbers of records are included to produce reliable estimates at the trust level. The two year period of 1st October 2021 to 30th September 2023 was selected for the reporting of patient characteristics to avoid reporting based on small numbers at the trust level, particularly for categorical variables with multiple subgroup options.
This NPaCA report allocates records to NHS organisations based on the “trust at diagnosis” recorded within the RCRD dataset.
We encourage all provider teams to review their data completeness and make improvements as this will increase the number of patients we can include in analyses and increase the range of analyses we can conduct. By focusing exclusively on data completeness for this report, we are aiming to shine a spotlight on areas where improvements are needed.
How have we chosen these specific data items to focus on?
Overall, the RCRD has very good data completeness and many variables are 100% complete across diagnoses; however, some variables have less than 100% completeness, and it is these variables that were selected for reporting. When analysing data quality, the NPaCA team recoded values as “missing” that would not be useful in practice and/or are not plausible values. For instance, values such as “not known”, “not specified”, or “not recorded” were considered to be missing, and implausible values such as performance status values other than 0-4 were considered to be missing.
For any queries relating to the audit, please email: [email protected]
Last updated: 15 July 2024, 11:03am