NICOR: National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research

NICOR

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  • Adult Cardiac Interventions
  • Adult Cardiac Surgery
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  • Congenital Heart Disease
    • Background
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    • Data Collection
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    • Reports and publications
  • Heart Failure
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• NICOR and data.gov.uk

Data

Data is collected and submitted by centres using a minimum dataset of 40 fields and through the online Lotus Domino version of the central cardiac audit database (CCAD). To ensure patient confidentiality the CCAD uses advanced data encryption technology to control access to data through a secure key system.

Independent data validation is carried out by a visiting team comprising of a data auditor and a clinician. 20 submitted records are chosen at random by the validation team and compared with hospitals medical records, operating theatres records, and with laboratory records on cardiac catheterisation.

Entries are checked in log books and catheter laboratories for the entire year in each hospital to ensure complete ascertainment of procedures. Periodically submitted data is also compared with hospital episode statistics (HES). This external validation process over the years has seen major improvements in the quality of data submitted by units and is vital for accurate survival analysis.

In addition the service provides analytical support with the production of annual reports to all congenital centres and makes available national survival results for the treatment of congenital heart disease to the public domain.

The audit aims:

to monitor care and provide national analysis of outcomes of paediatric cardiac surgery and therapeutic cardiac catheterisations procedures in children with congenital heart disease.

to provide the means for hospitals to record and compare both immediate and long-term outcomes of children with congenital heart disease

to provide long term comparative statistics for each hospital contributing in the audit. At present this includes survival rates at 30 days and one year after treatment

the ability to track re-intervention wherever it takes place, enabling clinicians to identify the long-term outcomes for patients following any specific treatment

to provide clinicians and the public with more accurate information about likely outcomes of current treatments

to provide validated, centre specific survival results (30 days and one year) after treatment for children with congenital heart disease in the public domain

to provide verbal and written feedback to each centre on data completeness and quality following validation visits, to include advice on best practice from other centres to optimise data quality and data collection efficiency

to facilitate the development and validation of risk stratification for surgery and therapeutic catheterisation in congenital heart disease

to facilitate detection of best practice in terms of survival and freedom from re-intervention, thereby improving patient care

to facilitate detection of poor performance by providing validated information to bodies involved with ongoing quality assurance thereby improving patient care.