National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA)

Programme overview

Lung cancer is one of the most common and serious types of cancer. Around 44,500 people are diagnosed with the condition every year in the UK. Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the UK after breast cancer and is the commonest cause of cancer-related death. The National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA) was developed in response to the finding in the late 1990s that outcomes for lung cancer patients in the UK lagged behind those in other westernised countries, and varied considerably between organisations within the UK. The audit began collecting data nationally in 2005, and since then has become an exemplar of national cancer audit. On 1 February 2022, the project transferred to the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It was previously run by the Royal College of Physicians.

The NLCA has previously achieved outstanding levels of NHS participation with data being used to drive improvements in the quality of care for people with lung cancer. The Royal College of Surgeons of England aims to build on this success by delivering a new NLCA that incorporates key advances in the field of lung cancer, diagnosis and treatment, whilst retaining the most successful elements of the previous audit.

Additional information on all HQIP-commissioned projects is available on the NHS Trusts page, which includes the recommendations repository, infographics compendium, 9 month publication schedule, impact report, and National Clinical Audit and Enquiries Directory. For further information about this project, please contact HQIP (see above).

Accessing data

Data collected on behalf of HQIP by all NCAPOP projects is routinely reported and these reports are available in the ‘Related resources’ section.

For regularly updated dynamic reporting of audit data, follow the link in the HQIP Directory in the column called ‘Link to dynamic reporting’.

The reported data is also placed on the data.gov.uk website.

For details of how to apply for data that is not in the public domain, please see HQIP’s data access webpages.

Details of the contracts that HQIP awards are available at: www.gov.uk/contracts-finder.