PATIENT CHOICE
How is patient information used?
Data is collected routinely as part of your care whilst accessing the Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) service, and covers the patient journey from hospital admission (where appropriate), inpatient rehab, and through to the outpatient rehab programme. Data collected includes the diagnosis that led to referral to rehab, any previous events or comorbidities, and the type of rehab received. It also records reasons why patients may not have taken part, or not completed their rehab programme. Data comes from a combination of information obtained via clinical appointments, rehab sessions and assessment questionnaires.
The National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation (NACR) uses patient information collected by CR teams across England, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Each year, NACR asks the Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG) at the Health Research Authority for permission to collect and use patient information, such as NHS number, date of birth, address and postcode. CAG can give the audit permission to collect this data, for specific audit purposes, without requiring consent and giving the audit ‘section 251 approval’ under Section 251 of the NHS Act 2006. The patient identifiable information is held by Clinical Audit, NHS England (formerly NHS Digital), the audit’s data processor, who supply pseudonymised downloads to the NACR team for audit analysis and associated research. The audit does not receive any patient identifiable information.
Reports published by NACR can be found here, and on the ‘Reports’ tab above, with Research under ‘Publications’:
National Data Opt-out
Patients can choose to stop their data being used for non-care purposes, such as research or care planning. This process is called the National Data Opt-out (NDO) and you can find out more about it on the NHS website here:
NHS: National Data Opt-out
NB: NDO is available to English patients only. Deciding to register with NDO does not affect an individual’s care.
NACR and National Data Opt-outs
In 2022 NACR applied to CAG for a temporary exemption (or deferral) from the NDO. CAG decided that the audit could be exempt on the grounds of patient safety and health inequalities research. This means that the NDO does not apply to NACR and records of all patients attending can be collected from CR teams for the audit’s use.
What does this mean?
If you are happy for your information to be used in the audit, you do not need to do anything If you do not want your information to be used in the audit, you will need to opt-out specifically from NACR, even if you have previously registered with NDO, because the audit has been granted exemption. To opt out from NACR complete the opt out form found here:
Please then email it to the Enquiries team at Clinical Audit, NHS England: enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk
Alternatively, contact the Enquiries team on 0300 303 5678 and request to opt out from the NACR audit.
Choosing to opt out will not affect your care.
For any questions about the audit, please contact the NACR team: nacr-project@york.ac.uk