National Pregnancy in Diabetes Audit implementation guidance

The National Pregnancy in Diabetes (NPID) audit forms part of the National Diabetes Audit (NDA), which is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) and managed by NHS England (formerly NHS Digital), in collaboration with Diabetes UK.

The NPID audit is part of HQIP's National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP). The NCAPOP audits measure healthcare practice against evidence-based standards, providing patients, the public and clinicians with a clear picture of the standards of healthcare being achieved. They also give healthcare provider’s benchmarked reports on their performance, with the aim of improving the care provided.

The NPID audit will enable all diabetes pregnancy services to measure their performance against NICE clinical guidelines and quality standards and against peer units. It has been designed to limit the burden of local data collection by linking to data that is already collected from other sources. The NPID Audit started on 11 March 2013, pregnancies included in the audit were those where the first contact with the antenatal clinic was no earlier than the 13 July 2012. National and regional reports from the first seven years (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019/2020 combined) of the audit have been published with 2021 and 2022 data to be published in October 2023. hospital level reports were published for the first time for 2015, due to the low number of pregnancy outcomes each year the service level reports cover pregnancy outcomes for 2014 to 2018 and the national report has moved to biennially so there are more records to analyse and report on.

Development and delivery of the NPID audit is guided by a multi-professional national group of obstetricians, midwives, diabetes specialist nurses, diabetologists, public health physicians, analysts, and service user representatives chaired by Professor Helen Murphy.

Previously HQIP have commissioned the audit, however from 2017 NHS England have used their powers under the Health and Social Care Act Section 254 to direct the data processors to collect, analyse and disseminate the NPID audit. NHS England will therefore continue to deliver the NPID audit as previously and will communicate with services about timings for any changes to the audit and the reporting schedule due to the changes in governance.

Further information and all NPID documentation are available. If you have any queries, please email the NPID audit team at [email protected].