NICOR has published its National Cardiac Audit Programme (NCAP) 2025 Report which shows evidence of good practice in cardiovascular services against a backdrop of ongoing challenges and pressures across the NHS.
The NCAP 2025 Report is supported by ten interactive sub-specialty clinical reports - providing detailed domain-level audits, registries and analyses - and a dedicated Annual Report for patients, carers and the public. The reports look at the current performance of cardiovascular services across the country, sharing where good practice standards are being met but also illustrating where there are opportunities for improvements in patient wellbeing, safety and outcomes.
Five years on since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the adverse effects on waiting times for elective treatment and delayed admissions for urgent care are being reversed, though this is not the case in all areas and in some parts of the country patient waiting lists and admission delays are getting worse. The reasons behind this are complex but include staff retention and recruitment. This adds further strain to an already overworked NHS, which is struggling to cope with growing demands from a larger and older population.
Of particular concern are the substantial inequalities and variances in care across the country. More work is needed to understand these and to determine which variations are unwarranted and how things can be done to ensure universal and equal access to treatment for everyone.
Despite the many challenges and in what remains a turbulent time for the NHS, progress is being made on the overall quality of care in many areas of cardiology, with hospitals achieving excellent results for many specific national quality standards. This includes:
- very low mortality and complication rates for cardiac surgery in both adults and children with congenital heart disease
- more heart attack patients being managed on a cardiac ward and most being seen by a specialist team, receiving appropriate care and having referrals to cardiac rehabilitation on discharge
- an increase in the number of higher-risk (STEMI) heart attack patients being prescribed the newer P2Y12 antiplatelet drugs
- most hospitalised heart failure patients being seen by a specialist team and many receiving appropriate care
- increased use of intracoronary imaging to detect type of disease and results of treatment in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) cases for left main coronary lesions and for complex PCI cases
- the majority of TAVI procedures being performed under conscious sedation using the percutaneous transfemoral approach (the catheter is inserted into the femoral artery), resulting in fewer complications and low in-hospital and 30-day mortality rates
- low re-intervention rates because of complications in the first year after a cardiac rhythm management device implant.
The National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR) is hosted by NHS Arden & GEM. More information on the latest NCAP reports can be found on the NICOR website.