The proportion of eligible men and women aged 60 to 74 invited for screening who had an adequate faecal occult blood test (FOBt) screening result in the previous 30 months.
Rationale
Bowel cancer screening supports early detection of cancer and polyps which are not cancers but may develop into cancers over time. About one in 20 people in the UK will develop bowel cancer during their lifetime. This indicator provides an opportunity to incentivise screening promotion and other local initiatives to increase coverage of bowel cancer screening. Improvements in coverage would mean more bowel cancers are detected at earlier, more treatable stages, and more polyps are detected and removed, reducing the risk of bowel cancer developing.
Definition of numerator
Adequately screened (numerator) is the number of eligible men and women who have had an adequate gFOBT screening result recorded in the past 30 months.
Definition of denominator
Eligible population (denominator) is the number of men and women aged 60 to 74 years resident in the area (determined by postcode of residence) who are eligible for bowel cancer screening at a given point in time, excluding those whose recall has been ceased for clinical reasons (e.g. no functioning colon) or if they opt out of the programme.
Caveats
Data for ICBs are estimated from local authority data. In most cases ICBs are coterminous with local authorities, so the ICB figures are precise. In cases where local authorities cross ICB boundaries, the local authority data are proportionally split between ICBs, based on population located in each ICB.
The affected ICBs are:
- Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire;
- Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes;
- Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West;
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough;
- Frimley;
- Hampshire and Isle of Wight;
- Hertfordshire and West Essex;
- Humber and North Yorkshire;
- Lancashire and South Cumbria;
- Norfolk and Waveney;
- North East and North Cumbria;
- Suffolk and North East Essex;
- Surrey Heartlands;
- Sussex;
- West Yorkshire.
Please be aware that the April 2019 to March 2020, April 2020 to March 2021 and April 2021 to March 2022 data covers the time period affected by the COVID19 pandemic and therefore data for this period should be interpreted with caution.
This indicator gives screening coverage by local authority of residence. This is not the same as the indicator based on population registered with primary care organisations which include patients wherever they live. This is likely to result in different England totals depending on selected (registered or resident) population footprint.
The indicator excludes women outside the target age range for the screening programme who may self-refer for screening.
The data for bowel screening indicators has been refreshed for all years, back to the 2013 to 2014 financial year. This is due to a methodology change, to ensure the data periods run up to the end of March in the given financial year.