UK Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) audit: Round 4 (2012 - 2014)

Data from the UK IBD audit requires careful interpretation and the information should not be looked at in isolation when assessing standards of care. The results should be interpreted within the context of the fact that many sites entered a relatively small number of cases to the audit and therefore all percentages should be viewed alongside the actual number of cases submitted. As a reflection of this a very small number of events can change percentages quite dramatically and hence caution is advised.

Data relating to round 4 of the UK IBD audit (2012-2014) biological therapies, organisational, inpatient care and inpatient experience audit elements are being made available, data for adult and paediatric sites is provided separately.

The purpose of the biological therapies audit is to measure the efficacy, safety and appropriate use of biological therapies in patients with inflammatory bowel disease in the UK and to capture the views of patients on their quality of life at intervals during their treatment. This is a prospective audit with data collection taking place in ‘real time’ during the clinic appointment. Participating sites were asked to identify and enter data on patients newly started on biological therapies between 12 September 2011 and 28 February 2014.

The organisational audit data provided gives an indication of how an IBD service is resourced and organised in relation to the IBD Standards, they are not a definition of clinical quality. Participating sites were required to meet as a multidisciplinary team and sit together to undertake data collection for the audit, via a web based assessment tool. Sites were asked to consider their service provision ‘as at’ 31 December 2013.

The inpatient care audit data provided gives information about the process of care provided to IBD inpatients. These data items were identified by the UK IBD audit steering group as reflecting the questions from the round 4 inpatient care dataset of particular importance to IBD patients. In the inpatient care audit participating sites were asked to prospectively identify and audit up to 50 consecutive admissions of adults and young people with ulcerative colitis between 1 January and 31 December 2013. For each audited admission entered to the web tool, each site was asked to generate an inpatient experience questionnaire that was to be given to the patient on discharge. Each site was provided with freepost envelopes to allow and encourage patients to return their questionnaires to the project team at the Royal College of Physicians. Alternatively patients could enter their own data directly with the provision of a web link to the UK IBD audit web tool. Each questionnaire had a unique cross reference code that could be linked back to the admission that had been entered in the inpatient care audit.

These data do not include any data about individual patients nor does it contain any patient identifiable data. The remit of the UK IBD audit covers the whole of the UK, however data here are provided at ‘site’ level for all participating sites, in England only. The term ‘site’ refers to an IBD Service that may be run across one or more hospitals within an NHS organisation, therefore an NHS Trust in England can comprise of one or more sites.