The National Pancreatic Cancer Audit (NPaCA) determines whether the care received by people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in England and Wales is consistent with current recommended practice and provides information to support healthcare providers, commissioners and regulators improve care. Using information that is routinely collected by the NHS, the NPaCA reports a set of process and outcome measures that cover important aspects of the care pathway for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
This second State of the Nation report provides an overview of the patterns of care and outcomes for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer between 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2022 in England, and 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2023 in Wales.
Findings in the report lead to five recommendations highlighting where improvements in care are needed. These recommendations are aligned to the quality improvement goals of the NPaCA.
Results for individual organisations are available via the NPaCA dashboard and in Excel-based data tables. These results enable regional and national comparisons to support local quality improvement, supported by a Quality Improvement Action Plan Template to support MDT discussions.
The audit uses information that is routinely collected by the NHS. For people diagnosed and treated in England, the data are collated, maintained and quality assured by NHS England’s National Disease Registration Service (NDRS). For people in Wales, data are provided by Wales Cancer Network (WCN), using the Cancer Network Information System Cymru (Canisc) electronic patient record system. A Methodology Supplement provides information on the data used in this report and the NPaCA performance indicators.
To further support quality improvement activities, NPaCA also publishes quarterly reports of data quality metrics and a subset of performance indicators. The NPaCA web pages also provide access to other sources of information about pancreatic cancer.