CAN-02 becomes CAN-04

NHS England has released a mid-year update to IIF indicator CAN-02, which becomes CAN-04. Practices should not be too concerned about the change, and continue to have a FIT reported in the 21 days prior to referral.

This change appears to have been introduced due to the ongoing difficulties system suppliers have faced in reporting accurate figures for CQRS. Instead of counting the number of referrals or codes, patients are simply counted towards CAN-04 if they have at least 1 FIT result recorded in the 21 days prior to any colorectal/lower GI 2 week wait referral during the contract year.

We have also been doing some work on CAN-02 end of year reporting for 2023-24. A number of subscribers noted that the numbers reported by PCIT differed from CQRS, in some cases by as much as half. The reasons for this are precisely why CAN-04 has been introduced. PCIT had written both CAN-01 and CAN-02 to report on a maximum of one referral per patient per month, mitigating the challenge of double coding. In manual investigations, we are pleased to have been able to return accurate numbers of referrals made following a FIT.

During these investigations we also identified an issue with EMIS’ reporting which was not counting where a FIT had been coded on the same day as a referral. EMIS have been made aware of the issue, but CAN-04 sidesteps the problem.

Learning disability code issue

A customer found that the code Moderate learning disability was no longer counting towards the Learning Disability register, so they were unable to see the patient on the QOF register or view the LD page on the OneTemplate. They reached out to PCIT this week after not getting an answer from EMIS customer support.

We found that 7 codes were removed from the LD_COD reference set at the beginning of May which appears to have been reflected in EMIS’ MKBv211. Five of the codes were reinstated in TRUD at the end of May, but these have not yet been restored to EMIS. As of Friday 26th July, SystmOne appears to have resolved the issue.

The missing codes are: mild / moderate / significant / profound / severe learning disability.

NHSE lists a known data quality issue relating to LD_COD here. 

There is no indication of which MKB release will restore these codes for EMIS. Primary Care IT has applied a fix to a concept to ensure that templates still work on affected patients with a learning disability, while we will also be adding a fix to the eligibility criteria for the flu searches we are releasing next week. QOF and IIF searches will continue to be affected until EMIS updates the MKB.