What we are doing
On 1 March 2017 the RCP’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Audit Programme successfully transitioned the biologics audit to the UK IBD Registry.
The IBD Audit Programme has over the last 12 years, observed many improvements in the care of people with IBD. Patients with IBD are now much better off than they were 12 years ago – there are now more specialist IBD nurses, pharmacists and dietitians seeing more people with IBD. Mortality in hospital has halved since the start of collecting audit data in 2006.
The provision and care of people receiving biological therapies has improved and they are generally safe and effective – in particular the new biosimilars that have come to the market in the last few years.
Improvements still required in Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Although the IBD Audit Programme has demonstrated how widespread data collection has encouraged and driven improvements over time there are still many aspects of care that still need to be improved. The transition to the IBD UK Registry is the start of a new phase of ongoing data collection and reporting. We encourage hospital teams to participate with the IBD Registry in order to continue to build on the successes of the audit programme.
Opportunities to continue improving care for people with IBD
In 2017 eight teams specialising in inflammatory bowel disease successfully completed a 6 month course on quality improvement at the RCP Quality Improvement hub. All of them developed and implemented an improvement project in various aspects of care including pre-screening for biological therapies, improving the flow of patients transitioning from paediatric to adult care and improving the running of multi-disciplinary team meetings.
To find out about further opportunities on quality improvement training see RCPQI.