National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBoCA)

Programme overview

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers in the UK after breast and lung cancer, with approximately 40,000 new cases registered each year. Occurrence of colorectal cancer is strongly related to age, with almost three-quarters of cases occurring in people aged 65 or over. Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the UK.

The audit is delivered jointly by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) Clinical Effectiveness Unit, and the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland (ACPGBI). The RCS provides project management and technical infrastructure, while the ACPGBI provides clinical leadership and direction.

The audit aims to improve the quality of care and survival of patients with bowel cancer and meets the requirements as set out in the NHS cancer plan, NICE guidelines and the report of the Bristol Royal Infirmary inquiry.

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.