You may remember back in June we published a blog article about a new grading report to quality assure national grading in diabetic eye screening (DES).
This report is now ready and the regional screening quality assurance service (SQAS) teams will send it out to local DES providers and commissioners by the middle of October.
Providers with unusual grading outcomes compared to all others are identified as ‘atypical’. This means they do not follow along the same lines as other providers in terms of their grading and are therefore considered to be demonstrating ‘atypicality’.
We will ask these atypical providers to review the data, plan and conduct audits from the grading outcome categories and report the findings to their commissioners and SQAS.
An atypicality score is unique to each provider and it is the responsibility of that provider to identify areas of concern and plan and conduct audits on that basis.
The SQAS team will talk to you about what you need to do if the report identifies your service as ‘atypical’.
Guidance on identifying differences in grading outcomes can be found on GOV.UK.
All queries should be directed to the PHE Screening helpdesk.
PHE Screening blogs
PHE Screening blogs provide up to date news from all NHS screening programmes. You can register to receive updates direct to your inbox, so there’s no need to keep checking for new blogs. If you have any questions about this blog article, or about population screening in England, please contact the PHE screening helpdesk.