pp73-75 CSJaug12.pdf

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is increasing and now affects one in 200 people in the UK, having profound lifechanging effects for sufferers. IBD – including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) – is a common cause of gastrointestinal morbidity. The total cost to the NHS has been estimated at £720 million,1 based on an average cost of £3,000 per patient per year, with up to half of total costs being for relapsing patients. Up to 25% of cases will present in childhood years, with a marked rise in incidence of paediatric IBD noted in the UK, over the past few decades. The third round of the UK Inflammatory Bowel Disease Audit, carried out in 2010, and published earlier in 2012 by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), reports that care for patients with UC and CD has improved across a wide range of measures since the previous two rounds in 2006 and 2008. The percentage of patients being seen by an IBD nurse specialist during their admission has also doubled since the first round. The UK IBD Audit (2010) was commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) as part of the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP) with additional funding from Healthcare Improvement Scotland, and was coordinated by the Clinical Effectiveness and Evaluation unit (CEEu) of the Royal College of Physicians. The 2010 audit focused on over 3,000 patients admitted with each condition. When comparing results from hospitals who participated in the previous two audits, 2,000 admissions each for UC and CD were directly comparable and their data was used in the report.

Room for improvement

The report noted that there is room for improvement in the following areas: