National Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Audit Programme: Wales Primary Care Clinical Audit 2021

The National Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Audit Programme (NACAP) has published its latest report on primary care in Wales. Based on data collected from 314 general practices between April 2020 and July 2021, it aims to empower stakeholders to use audit data to facilitate improvements in the quality of care for people diagnosed with asthma and COPD. The report found that 28.2% of adults with COPD 25.1% of adults with asthma and 24.9% of children with asthma (6-18 years old) had been prescribed an inhaler and had their inhaler technique checked in the past year (44.4%, 48.4% and 42.8% respectively in the 2018/20 audit). Other key findings include:

• 1.9% of adults received the gold standard diagnostic test for COPD (post-bronchodilator spirometry) in the past two years.
• 25% of adults with asthma had a personalised asthma action plan (PAAP) anytime in the past year
• 1.3% of children aged 6-18 years with asthma had a check of exposure of second-hand smoke recorded in the past year.

The report goes on the make a number of recommendations, including a call to professionals to ask parents about second-hand smoke exposure and provide very brief advice at their child’s asthma review. Update 27 July 2022: Version 2 of the NACAP Wales primary care 2021 audit report on 2020/21 data was published on 27 July 2022. This version corrects inaccuracies around the acknowledgement and contribution of the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank and BREATHE data hub teams. Updates were made in the following sections of the two main audit reports: Audit report:

• Front cover and Acknowledgements (page 22)
• Data analysis and methodology report: Front cover, Acknowledgements (page 2), How to use this report (page 4), Appendix A: Audit methodology (page 33) and Appendix B: References (page 38).

There were no changes to the audit data, key messages or recommendations. Read the full report: You can read the report by clicking on the link below. Stay up-to-date: For notifications of future reports from HQIP, sign up to our mailing list.