Performance measures of cancer screening tests

Dear Leo Pritchard,
Thank you for your email of 16 August 2024 in which you requested
information under the FOI Act from NHS England.
 
Your request was:
 
“I am seeking performance information on all cancer screening tests NHS
England currently uses.

Specifically, I would like to know the following information for each
cancer screening test:
1. True positive rate
2. True negative rate
3. False positive rate
4. False negative rate
5. Accuracy
6. F-score
7. Number of cancers detected through screening
8. Patient and clinician satisfaction with the screening program
9. Cost per screening test
10. Any other relevant performance metrics used by NHS England

Please provide this information in a spreadsheet file. Doing so will make
it easier to examine the information. Moreover, please explain how NHS
England assesses the merit of active cancer screening tests.

Are these metrics and/or others used?”
NHS England may hold information relevant to your request.  However, we
are unable to begin processing your request without further
clarification. 
It may help if we explain that the NHS in England is not one single
organisation. Rather, it is made up of multiple different organisations of
differing sizes, and operate at central, national, regional, and local
levels each with its own roles and responsibilities. 
  
NHS England is a single regulatory body responsible for overseeing the
funding, planning, delivery, transformation, and performance of NHS
healthcare in England. It is also responsible for providing unified
national leadership for the NHS.  
 
NHS England does not directly deliver clinical services. Any recorded
information NHS England may be able to provide in response to an FOI
request will generally relate to the functions we perform. 
  
For more information on the functions carried out by NHS England and the
types of information we hold, please visit our [1]website; for further
information on the NHS, its structure and other NHS organisations please
refer either to our [2]website or the NHS [3]website. 

The FOI Act gives you the right to ask any public sector organisation for
the recorded information they have on any subject. You can ask for any
information you think a public authority may hold; however, the right only
covers recorded information which includes information held on computers,
in emails and in printed or handwritten documents.

Your request can be in the form of a question, rather than a request for
specific documents, but the authority does not have to answer your
question if this would mean creating new information or giving an opinion
or judgment that is not already recorded. 
If a public authority does not hold recorded information relating to your
question, they will advise you that they do not hold the information. 
Section 1
 
Under Section 1(3) of the FOI Act, an authority is not obliged to comply
with an FOI request when it reasonably requires further information in
order to identify and locate the information requested. 
Your request asks about cancer screening tests that NHS England uses.
However, as outlined above, NHS England do provide clinical services
directly.
As such, we would be grateful if you could clarify: 

• Whether your request relates to NHS England or to clinical providers;
and
• If your request relates to NHS England, please provide elaboration on
what the term 'uses' refers to in the context of your request; and
• What timeframe your request relates to (in the format of
[day/month/year] to [day/month/year]).

Please be assured we are keen to assist with your enquiry. However, we
cannot guarantee that Section 12 or any other exemptions under the FOI act
will not apply to any further information requested. 
Please resubmit your request, addressing the clarification points raised
above, to [4][NHS England request email] quoting your reference number as
it appears in the subject bar.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information
NHS England
 

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