‘The NCEPOD Method’ – How the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death designs and delivers national clinical outcome review programmes

Abstract

Introduction This publication describes the method used by the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) to run confidential enquiries. With its history based around the review of surgical mortality, NCEPOD has now grown into a medical as well as surgical review and expanded its remit to review overall quality of care of all patients. Methods and analysis The work will describe the qualitative method used by NCEPOD to conduct a national confidential enquiry, starting with how a topic is selected through to report production. Covering all hospitals in the UK and using a network of local contacts, NCEPOD reviews a sample of cases from each hospital and provides in-depth multidisciplinary peer review to give a national picture on the quality of care provided. The peer review data collected is underpinned by quantitative data collected using questionnaires, and all analyses are undertaken using pivot tables in Excel. The paper will highlight the strengths, limitations and challenges of this qualitative method. Ethics and dissemination NCEPOD does not interact directly with patients and therefore does not require ethics approval. NCEPOD does, however, gain approvals through the relevant regulations in all UK countries to collect identifiable or anonymised data without consent. Conclusion The paper will be useful for those who need a reference document for the general approach to enquiries that NCEPOD now uses. It could also be read by those who would like to undertake their own local enquiry and would like a method to base it on.