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Outcome Data


Please click on any outcomes audit to see the data:Please click on any outcomes audit to see the data:

Understanding the Data

The latest audit report forms the sixth lung cancer clinical outcomes publication (LCCOP). Data from 27 surgical units in England, performing thoracic surgery between 1 January and 31 December 2017, were analysed, following a 6-week period of data validation by surgical units

The lung cancer clinical outcomes publication (LCCOP) is an NHS England initiative, commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP), to publish quality measures for lung cancer surgery using national clinical audit and administrative data.

The aims of publishing these results are to:

  • reassure patients that the quality of clinical care is high
  • assist patients in having informed conversations with their healthcare team about treatment options, including surgery
  • provide information to individuals, teams and organisations to allow them to monitor and improve the quality of the clinical care that they provide
  • inform the commissioning of NHS lung cancer services.

Data for this report is based on patient-level information collected by the NHS, as part of the care and support of cancer patients. The data is collated, maintained and quality assured by the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS), which is part of Public Health England (PHE). Validation of local data, and collection of data on surgical approach, has been performed in collaboration with the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery (SCTS) and their network of local audit leads in every NHS unit.

Methods

Patients undergoing lung resection for primary lung cancer within the English NHS are included. Operations for SCLC are not included. Diagnostic or staging operations, and resections for metastatic disease, are also excluded.

Lung cancer operations are extracted from the NCRAS data and sent to local SCTS audit leads within each surgical unit for local validation. The records are cross-referenced to Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data to obtain comorbidity and other data. Named consultants are cross-referenced against the General Medical Council (GMC) Specialist Register.

Case-mix adjustment and outlier notification

Survival outcomes are adjusted using comorbidity and demographic data from HES and NCRAS and presented as odds ratios relative to pooled national data. Units with odds ratios for survival beyond 95% confidence intervals (CI) (alert) level are notified directly. Units beyond the 99.8% (alarm) level (both negative and positive (good practice)) are both notified and identified in the LCCOP report.