National Bowel Cancer Audit 2021: Quality and Outcomes for NHS England and Wales

The National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBOCA) measures the quality and outcomes of care for patients with bowel cancer in NHS hospitals in England and Wales. It is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership and is a collaboration between the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland, NHS Digital, and the Royal College of Surgeons. The 2021 data file contains organizational figures based on patients diagnosed up to 31 March 2020, covering audit participation, process of care measures, and treatment outcomes.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking NHS trust performance based on audit participation and data completeness metrics.
• Analyzing care process quality based on measures about the process of care given to patients.
• Modeling treatment outcomes based on information about care outcomes and treatment.
• Identifying regional variations in bowel cancer care quality across England and Wales.

Strengths

• Data is commissioned by the national Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) as part of the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme.
• The audit is a collaboration between major UK medical bodies: the ACPGBI, NHS Digital, and the Royal College of Surgeons.
• Data covers patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer up to a specific date (31 March 2020).
• Explicitly states it does not contain individual patient information or identifiable data, ensuring privacy compliance.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service, via the National Bowel Cancer Audit collaboration.

Collection Method

Clinical audit data collected from NHS hospitals in England and Wales.

Time Range

Patients diagnosed up to 31 March 2020.

Freshness

Data is based on patients diagnosed up to 31 March 2020, published in the 2021 Annual Report.

Geography

NHS hospitals in England and Wales, United Kingdom.