Sharing clinical audit findings so people can act

21 Oct 2026

HQIP’s CEO, Chris Gush, explains how we share clinical audit findings, why it’s vital to improvement, and how everyone can help…

National clinical audit helps us see where care is working well and where it needs to improve. We want that evidence to be available to everyone who has an interest in it, particularly patients and the people responsible for delivering services. At HQIP, we publish findings and recommendations so they’re available for all to use, and work hard to get them to the people who can act on them. 

That includes being clear about findings that raise difficult questions. Differences in treatment, gaps in care, and inequalities in outcomes need to be understood. Patients should be able to see what the evidence says about their care, and those responsible for services should be able to explain how they are responding. 

The Government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England places transparency about the quality of care at the heart of NHS improvement. National clinical audit provides a robust foundation for that ambition. Our published findings help patients to ask informed questions, and give those responsible for services the evidence to identify priorities and track improvement. 

Our national clinical audit and outcome review reports are free to access through our online reports archive, alongside summaries and recommendations. We also publish a schedule of forthcoming reports, so people can see what is planned and arrange to receive regular updates. 

Our National Clinical Audit Benchmarking portal lets people explore published results by trust, hospital, unit or audit. Individual programmes provide further detail through their own websites and data platforms, including more recent results where available. 

We also have a responsibility to make recommendations useful. We work with audit teams and funders to reach a consensus on recommendations, considering what the evidence supports and who is best placed to act. Each recommendation makes clear what needs to improve and who is responsible for acting on it. 

HQIP’s approach has been informed by work on how national audit can better support improvement. In his June 2021 review, former HQIP Senior QI Lead Dr Ian Woolhouse proposed concise annual summaries with no more than five national recommendations, alongside public interactive results, more frequent feedback, and online resources to best support local improvement. The aim being to make the evidence easier to use in improving care. This work has informed how we structure reports and recommendations. 

The recommendations themselves are publicly available. Our reports and recommendations repository brings them together, helping organisations maintain oversight of what is being asked of services across different areas of care. 

We share new publications through website news announcements and a dedicated report bulletin, with further coverage in our regular monthly ebulletins. We send tailored information to NHS trust communications teams, professional bodies and national organisations, as well as clinical networks and charities with an interest in the subjects covered. 

We actively encourage colleagues and organisations to share through their own channels. We support this sharing through professional forums and social media, with follow-up posts drawing attention to individual reports. Further coverage in our newsletters and website articles keeps findings in view beyond publication day. 

We put effort into this because findings need to reach people with different responsibilities. Clinical teams need to understand what the results mean for their practice. Trust medical, nursing and multidisciplinary leaders, executive teams and boards need to consider the implications for quality and safety, and the action required within their organisation. 

Regional teams can use the evidence to identify shared challenges, and support learning between services. National organisations can use it to inform policy, standards and decisions about how care is organised. NHS England also circulates publication updates through its policy, clinical leadership, communications and regional quality networks. 

Our impact of data website area explains how this evidence supports safer care and addresses inequalities, alongside the contribution of patients and carers. We also publish programme impact reports on individual programme pages, including primary breast cancer, kidney cancer and maternity and perinatal care. These describe how programmes support improvement and complement their clinical findings and recommendations. 

Our current Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign is a key example of how we work with the wider sector and patients to share our resources with those who need to see them. It brings together the primary and metastatic breast cancer audits, their published findings and recommendations, links to dashboards and articles explaining the work. It also includes a patient’s perspective, in both article and video formats, on the importance of data and listening to the people who use services. 

Our audit data also contributes to research that reaches audiences beyond the clinical audit community. In July 2025, research using PICANet data highlighted inequalities in outcomes for children admitted to intensive care. Published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, the findings were shared publicly by Imperial College London and HQIP. The Guardian also covered the research. This helps bring important questions about the quality and fairness of care into wider public discussion. 

Open reporting also means explaining results carefully. Readers need to know what period the data covers, how comparisons have been made and where there are limitations. Our published clinical findings and recommendations are open to everyone, while the underlying patient information remains subject to safeguards that protect confidentiality. 

I welcome interest in our work from patients, healthcare professionals and the media. National clinical audit provides a basis for asking informed questions about care and holding services to account. We want people to read the findings, discuss the recommendations and use them to support improvement. 

I would encourage anyone interested in healthcare quality to explore HQIP reports and sign up for publication updates. Within services, the findings should inform improvement plans and board discussions, with clear responsibility for responding to recommendations. By working together, we can support patients to see what has changed as a result.