By Niamh McNamara, BowelScreen Quality Assurance Coordinator, National Screening Service
We’ve published a new edition of the Standards for Quality Assurance in Colorectal Screening. It sets out the quality standards and requirements against which our BowelScreen programme is measured including administration, the faecal immunochemical test (FIT), endoscopy, radiology, histopathology and treatment.
About BowelScreen
The purpose of BowelScreen is to identify the population most at risk from bowel (colorectal) cancer and to target those most likely to benefit from early detection and treatment. We invite people who have no symptoms of bowel cancer. The benefit of BowelScreen is that, over time, the rate of deaths from bowel cancer will reduce.
BowelScreen was introduced in October 2012 to provide free bowel cancer screening to the eligible population - men and women aged 60 to 69 - every two years. In October 2023, we lowered the age range to include everyone aged 59. This is the first stage of our plans to expand the age range to everyone aged 55 to 74.
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance (QA) is the process of checking that standards are met and continuous improvement is encouraged. Each part of the screening process must be fully quality assured and monitored to ensure it adheres to the highest international standards and gives rise to the best possible outcomes. The QA committee for colorectal screening regularly monitors and measures its performance against these standards to make sure we are meeting our purpose.
Clinical Advisory Group
The BowelScreen Clinical Advisory Group (CAG) set quality standards and make recommendations to the BowelScreen Executive Management Team (EMT) on clinical aspects of the programme. The standards are kept under review and revised, as necessary, when new evidence or data becomes available.
Review process
QA standards review subgroups were convened in 2022 and included representatives from across the National Screening Service and the BowelScreen programme. These groups reviewed and assessed existing BowelScreen standards, identified any potential gaps against international standards, recommended best practice and ensured that the standards are appropriate and drive quality improvement.
During the review some QA standards were archived and replaced with new standards. Standards that were updated include those where there was significant change to clinical practice; standards that did not have any outcome measures; and where there was publication of new evidence. Where a current QA standard was archived, but remains clinically relevant, we’ll continue collecting data to allow for future analysis, if needed.
The revised standards were reviewed and approved by a peer review panel including international experts and practitioners in the delivery of bowel cancer screening, endoscopy, radiology, histopathology and surgery.
The standards were recommended for approval by the CAG in September 2023 and ratified by the EMT in November 2023.
We’ll carry out a formal review of the standards in line with our QA Policy Framework within a minimum of 5 years.