The CVDPREVENT Audit is a national primary care audit that supports the implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan, the annually negotiated GP Contract and the national CVD Prevention programme. The CVDPREVENT Audit is commissioned and delivered by several partners (hereafter referred to as ‘Audit Partners’) including NHS England, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID), the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) and HQIP’s commissioned provider – NHS Benchmarking Network.
The NHS Long Term Plan identifies CVD as a clinical priority and the single biggest condition where lives can be saved by the NHS over the next 10 years. CVD causes a quarter of all deaths in the UK and is the largest cause of premature mortality in deprived areas.
The aim of the CVDPREVENT Audit is to support professionally led quality improvement, optimising diagnosis and treatment of high-risk conditions to prevent heart attacks and strokes at scale. The CVDPREVENT Audit also aims to evaluate the national CVD Prevention programme and inform better decisions on its delivery. The data has and continues to help clinicians understand how well they are performing in the diagnosis and management of six high-risk conditions for CVD.
CVDPREVENT Audit data has been linked with Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and Mortality data by NHS England. The purpose of this linkage is to facilitate the tracking, monitoring and evaluation of national programme delivery across the life course and care pathway. The linked data will also allow the Audit Partners to determine the impact on outcomes and health inequalities in both primary and secondary care.
Furthermore, CVDPREVENT Audit data is being re-used for the purposes of the National Obesity Audit (NOA). The NOA is required to support the measurement of weight management service provision, interventions and outcomes to facilitate the delivery of efficient, effective and equitable prevention and care.
CVDPREVENT Audit data has also been de-identified and held within NHS England’s secure de-identified data environment, Unified Data Access Layer (UDAL), to facilitate the tracking of the recovery of cardiovascular services post COVID-19. It will additionally provide an on-going resource to inform activities supporting NHS England’s statutory functions under the NHS Act 2006. De-identified CVDPREVENT Audit data will also be linked to other de-identified datasets in UDAL to support the above purposes.