The Directory
What is The Directory?
The HQIP ‘Directory’ is a guidance document that collates high level information supplied by the teams that manage national audit and quality improvement programmes. It is a tool/resource designed to assist healthcare service providers in planning and reporting on their audit activity each year. It is refreshed regularly and includes:
- NCAPOP projects (commissioned by HQIP)
- Projects included in the NHS England Quality Accounts List (and operated by other organisations)
- Other national quality improvement projects operated by other organisations.
The Directory includes information on projects that plan to run during the forthcoming financial year, as well as those that ran during the previous financial years. The FAQs below give further information in relation to trust requirements.
How can The Directory help you?
Healthcare service providers may find The Directory useful when planning audit activity and preparing their Quality Accounts written report. The Directory aims to provide a quick, one-stop, high-level source of information.
Where does The Directory information derive from?
The information included in The Directory is supplied by the teams that manage national audit and quality improvement programmes. If you have specific project queries, please use the project contact details provided within The Directory.
Further information on NCAPOP published reports, recommendations and infographics are available for download, in single point of reference documents, on the HQIP ‘NHS Trusts’ web page here.
Provider survey
If you manage a national audit or quality improvement programme and would like to be included in The Directory 2024-25, or to have an existing listing revised, please complete the survey using this link.
Note that NCAPOP audit programmes do not need to complete a survey – please contact Helen Baron ([email protected]) further information.
A survey should be completed for each national project or work stream, which plans to collect national data or publish a national report, during the remainder of the 2023-24, or the next 2024-25 financial year. Additional notes regarding survey completion are provided within the Survey Monkey form.
The deadline for submitting survey responses is 5pm on Monday 11 March 2024.
Current version of The Directory
The current version has been amended to add NHSE Quality Accounts List 2024-25 inclusion information only (Column L). No other details have been updated or added and where programmes/workstreams were not already listed in The Directory, these have been added for completeness. Please note that an annual review of The Directory is currently underway, and a fully updated version will be uploaded ahead of the 2024-25 financial year.
If you have previously visited this webpage we advise carrying out a hard refresh to ensure you are viewing the latest version. You can do this by simultaneously holding down the Ctrl key and F5 key on a PC, or by holding the Shift key and clicking the refresh icon on a Mac.
FAQs for The Directory
- How do trusts confirm which projects they must participate in?
The NHS Standard Contract (‘SC26 Clinical Networks, National Audit Programmes and Approved Research Studies’ specifically 26.1.2 and sub bullets 26.1.2.1 / 26.1.2.2 / 26.1.2.3’) sets out the requirement to participate in:
- any national programme within the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP);
- any other national clinical audit or clinical outcome review programme managed or commissioned by HQIP; and
- any national programme included within the NHS England Quality Accounts List for the relevant Contract Year.
The NHS Standard Contract also gives commissioners the power to require remedial action of NHS healthcare providers who fail to participate, with scope for withholding funding in the event of sustained non-compliance.
See weblink here: 03-nhs-standard-contract-fl-scs-2324.pdf (england.nhs.uk)
- Does The Directory provide information about the types of clinical service an audit is recruiting from?
This information is available within The Directory.
The current health & social care settings provided in The Directory are:
- primary care
- secondary care
- mental health
- community care
- social care
- independent.
- Does The Directory include information about patient inclusion and exclusion criteria, such as ages, contraindications etc?
This information is available within The Directory currently and has been provided by the project teams.
- Are dates for registration, data collection, processing and feedback of results available?
Registration: This information is not currently contained in The Directory and may be found by visiting the programme/provider organisation website or contacting the project directly.
Data collection: This information is in The Directory and is provided by the project teams.
Processing and feedback of results / when available online: This information is not currently contained in The Directory and may be found by visiting the programme/provider organisation website or contacting the project directly.
- Does The Directory indicate the data to be collected by ‘type’ ie. clinical records data, PROMs and PREMs, organisational questionnaires?
This information is not currently contained in The Directory and may be found by visiting the programme/provider organisation website or contacting the project directly.
- Can an estimate of data burden be found in The Directory ie. expected time taken per patient form and expectation of who should collect and enter data?
This information is not currently contained in The Directory and may be found by visiting the programme/provider organisation website or contacting the project directly.
- Does The Directory show how data will be transmitted to an audit ie. paper based manual input, electronic submission?
This information is not currently contained in The Directory and may be found by visiting the programme/provider organisation website or contacting the project directly.
- Does The Directory provide final report dates to facilitate local trust improvement?
This information is available via:
- The Directory
- Project communications
- Within the ‘NHS Trusts Resources’ section of the HQIP website at: https://www.hqip.org.uk/resources/nhs-trusts/
- What is the mechanism for a trust to feedback improvement suggestions to an audit?
This information is not contained within The Directory and may be found by visiting the programme/provider organisation website or contacting the project directly.
- Could individual case ascertainment statements be provided to each trust by projects to support the quality account?
It is not possible for audit providers to make information available to trusts on an individual basis.
This is because case ascertainment requires up-to-date information about data collection and this is only available from local hospital systems as to which patients have been coded within that financial period. The other source of this information is from HES data but this is subject to delay and hence there would be a six month time lag. The Trust Quality Account requires information regarding the last year of participation / case ascertainment details. Hence there is a data lag gap that can only be filled by the local Trust systems.
The NCAPOP providers are only able to obtain information retrospectively from external data sources so this information would not be current enough for participating trusts quality accounts reporting.
- Which projects outside of NCAPOP charge trusts a subscription fee?
Information relating to non-NCAPOP project fee charging is available within The Directory and has been provided by the relevant project teams. Further information may be found by contacting the relevant project directly.