NCAPOP: New topics procurement process underway

14 November 2011

NCAPOP news release

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership was pleased to report last month that eleven new topics for national clinical audit are to join the 29 projects already forming the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme. 

NCAPOP is commissioned and managed by HQIP on behalf of the Department of Health, and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley made the announcement on 22 October 2011.  You can see his speech here.

The four topics to be procured in the current financial year are:

• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
• Emergency Laparotomy
• The National Vascular Registry
• Prostate Cancer

The procurement processes for COPD and for Emergency Laparotomy have begun, and pre-qualification questionnaires are currently available from procurement@hqip.org.uk. The tender packs will be issued to interested parties in December 2011.

The procurement processes for the National Vascular Registry and the Prostate Cancer audit are due to start the end of this month (November 2011).

Each procurement takes around nine months and the new programmes are to be procured in pairs, with the first pair of contracts (COPD and Emergency Laparotomy) projected to start around May 2012 and the second pair in August 2012. Should the subsequent topics receive confirmation of funding, these will be procured in pairs every 2-3 months thereafter. For new audits there is frequently a year of development from the start of the contract, and the national roll-out of data collection would normally start following this. If the new programmes encompass existing data collections, these will continue without a break where possible (for database-style audits).