Radiotherapy Dose and Fractionation, May 2025 update

• From October 2023, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust submitted all palliative episodes as radical, this was due to errors in the Trust's mapping process. The impact of this issue is small overall, with the incorrectly mapped palliative activity constituting approximately 100 episodes per month which makes up around 3% of England's total monthly palliative activity, though this is 35% of the Trust’s monthly activity. The Trust is aware of the issue, and both the submission mappings and the RTDS data held by NDRS are being corrected.
• The Christie NHS Foundation Trust have incorrectly coded some episodes as Other intent rather than Radical or Palliative. This affects their activity from 2023 onwards and is most pronounced in May to August 2024 when 47% of their episodes are coded as Other. The Christie typically account for approximately 6.5% of all radiotherapy episodes in England.

The relevant trusts and the RTDS Data Liaison team within NDRS are aware of these data quality issues and both the submission mappings and the RTDS data held by NDRS are being corrected, with an aim to have resolved the issues in time for July's data snapshot.

In addition, the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust have approximately 10% of their RTDS data missing between April 2023 and December 2023. The Royal Marsden typically account for 3-4% of all radiotherapy episodes in England. There have been long-standing issues with data submissions from the Marsden, therefore this is within the scale of DQ issues that the team deal with on an ongoing basis. Timeframes for resolution are not yet known due to the dependency on receiving trust data submissions, however if this issue persists in the July data snapshot we will ensure that the appropriate data quality notice is included in the July publication.