National Cancer Peer Review Programme
Key Stages
National Cancer Peer Review is a national quality assurance programme for NHS cancer services.
The National Cancer Peer Review Programme (NCPRP) involves both self-assessment by cancer service teams and external reviews of teams conducted by professional peers, against nationally agreed “quality measures”.
The Peer Review Programme consists of three key stages:
- Internally validated self assessments
- External verified self assessments
- Peer review visits
Each of the stages of the peer review process should determine whether each measure has been achieved or not and whether progress is being made towards achievement of the measures.
Self assessments need to be started by April and internally validated self assessments will need to be uplaoded on to CQUINS by the end of September each year.
For teams/services identified for the peer review visits , the deadline for self assesment will be six weeks prior to commencement of their Network's visit.
Click on the link to see the NCPRP Handbook
Self Assessment
All teams/services covered by the Manual for Cancer services are required to complete an annual self assessment.
Other services not included in the manual will be required to complete a self assesment when new measures are published, or when commisioned by a Strategic Health Authority.
Teams/services will need to provide evidence in support of their self assessment.
To support teams/services in their preparation , national evidence guides have been produced which will help teams/services to structure their supporting evidencein a way which demonstrates compliance against the measures.
Supporting evidence and assessment against the mesures is uploaded on the CQuINS national database.
Internal Validation
The purpose of internal validation is
- To ensure accountability for the self assessment within organisations and to provide a level of internal assurance.
- To develop a process where internal governance is the catalyst for change.
- To confirm that, to the best of the organisation's knowledge, the assessments are accurate and therefore fit for publication and sharing with stakeholders.
- To identify areas of good practice that could be shared.
External Verification
External verification will be led by the Cancer Peer Review Central Zone Co-ordinating Team, who will have access to expert clinical advisors and user reviewers during this stage
This external check of selected validated self assesments wil take the form of a desktop exercise.
The purpose of external verification is to ensure that a robust process of self assessment and internal validation has taken place.
External verification wil take place during October and November each year.
The completed reports will be publcaly available on CQuINS by the end of December each year
Schedule for Peer Review visits
Each Cancer Network has a fixed time when peer review visits will occur each year. This fixed time enables the Network to pre plan for review visits
GMCN are visted during March of each year and the Network and the Zonal Team agree the exact visiting dates within the allocated review month