The Directory
What is The Directory?
The Directory is an information document for guidance only.
HQIP produces The Directory, an Excel-based document containing high-level information about the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP) and additional projects commissioned by HQIP, plus national quality improvement projects operated by other organisations.
HQIP is not responsible for projects operated by other organisations. Information on these projects is included in The Directory as feedback indicated it is helpful for users to have national projects listed in one place.
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 preparing their Quality Accounts. 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 project Providers. If you have specific project queries, please contact the Provider project manager via the 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.
What The Directory doesn’t provide
The Directory is not a comprehensive and detailed portal. It is not meant to replace detailed drill-down and situation specific information that can be found on project Provider websites. It is not a living dynamic document and requires manual updates (& for this reason may not be fully up-to-date at a given point in time).
Provider survey
If you are a Provider of a national clinical audit, enquiry, or other national quality improvement project and would like a programme to be included in The Directory, or to have an existing listing revised, please complete the survey using this link.
Current version of The Directory
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 Department of Health legislation does not ‘mandate’ any requirement on a healthcare service provider to participate in specific national clinical audits or enquiries, simply to report on whether or not they have participated in them, in the annual Quality Account written report.
However, 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-full-length-standard-contract-22-23-service-conditions.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
HQIP would be very happy to consider feedback and suggestions regarding better categories. Please contact: [email protected]
- 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 is derived from information provided by the project teams.
However inclusion and exclusion criteria are variables that are subject to change. We would advise, given that this is detailed specific information, that a cross check always takes place against the Provider website.
HQIP is able to provide high-level one-stop information within The Directory. HQIP is unable to provide detailed drill down information in The Directory, this information can be found on Provider websites.
- Are dates for registration, data collection, processing and feedback of results available?
Registration: This information is not contained in The Directory and trusts should ascertain this from the provider website.
Data collection: This information is in The Directory and is provided by to HQIP by the project teams.
Processing and feedback of results / when available online: This information is not contained in The Directory but is available on the Provider websites.
The Directory is meant to be a high level reference document not a detailed portal for comprehensive and detailed drill-down information.
There is an inherent danger in trying to recreate the Provider website content within a directory, and this is not the purpose of The Directory. There is a risk with moving information from a primary source to a secondary Directory (i.e. The Directory). In order to mitigate this risk HQIP has balanced the need to be helpful vs the risk in using secondary information – therefore high-level information only is provided.
- Does The Directory indicate the data to be collected by ‘type’ ie. clinical records data, PROMs and PREMs, organisational questionnaires?
This information is not provided in The Directory. This is detailed and situation specific information that can be found on the Provider website.
- 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 provided in The Directory. This is detailed and situation specific information that can be found on the Provider website.
- Does The Directory show how data will be transmitted to an audit ie. paper based manual input, electronic submission?
This information is not provided in The Directory. This is detailed and situation specific information that can be found on the Provider website.
- Is information on Consent and Information Governance included in The Directory ie. Caldicott Guardian approval?
This information is not provided in The Directory. This is detailed and situation specific information that can be found on the Provider website.
- 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. HQIP encourages Trusts to provide feedback directly to project Providers.
- 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?
HQIP does not have comprehensive information about non-NCAPOP project charging fees.
Potentially the following programmes are either planning to or may charge fees (but please check the relevant website for details). This is not a comprehensive list and is subject to change:
- National Joint Registry (NJR)
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Registry, Biological Therapies Audit (IBD)
- Prescribing Observatory for Mental Health (POMH-UK)
- Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM)
- Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) – Case Mix Programme
- The Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN)
- British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS)
- What action can be taken if a web link or information contained within The Directory is broken or incorrect?
Given the amount of information already contained within The Directory ensuring functioning web links consumes a significant amount of resource and we are unable to test all links on a regular basis.
To manage this in a pragmatic way, HQIP contacts project Providers once a year (usually preceding Trusts undertaking their QA work) to request assurance of the integrity of their project entry on The Directory. We hope that this means the Directory is in good working order ready for people to use the information for QA work.
The NCAPOP Provider Newsletter includes reminders to ensure accurate Directory entries.
HQIP encourages both project Providers and Trusts to notify us of any errors, non working links, issues or ad-hoc changes that are required.
With regard to Provider website ease of navigation:
HQIP encourages stakeholders to provide feedback regarding ease of navigation directly to the project Providers.