Guide · checked October 2026

The national PCI audit (NAPCI) and BCIS explained

The National Audit of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (NAPCI) is run by NICOR as part of the National Cardiac Audit Programme and collects data on all PCI activity in NHS hospitals and some private hospitals across the UK; BCIS collaborates with NICOR on the PCI data, and NHS providers are contractually expected to take part.

Who runs it

NICOR (the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research) manages ten national clinical audits and registries. It is hosted by Arden and GEM CSU and commissioned by NHS England and GIG Cymru/NHS Wales. NAPCI is one of the ten audits in the National Cardiac Audit Programme, alongside audits such as MINAP, TAVI and cardiac rhythm management.

BCIS, the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society, collaborates with NICOR to collect and analyse PCI data. BCIS says its audit of adult interventional procedures runs from 1991 to the present, and its reports are available to members.

What it collects and reports

NICOR says NAPCI reports on activity, trends and quality improvement metrics against national and international standards; the dataset is currently version 5.6.6. BCIS says more than 100 data items are recorded per procedure, covering patient details, reason for presentation, technique and equipment, and in-hospital outcomes, and that 30-day survival is risk-adjusted using Office for National Statistics life-status data for England and Wales.

NICOR publishes interim summaries and annual reports. Its National Cardiac Audit Programme page notes commissioner requirements for complete and frequent data submissions, and that some hospitals are not meeting them.

Is participation required?

NAPCI is on NHS England's Quality Accounts list for 2026-27. The NHS Standard Contract (SC26) requires providers to take part in any national programme on that list for the contract year. So NHS-funded providers are contractually expected to submit; the Quality Accounts regulations themselves only require trusts to report whether they took part. The National Cardiac Audit Programme is not marked as part of NCAPOP on the 2026-27 list.

Common confusions

NAPCI is run by NICOR, with BCIS as a collaborator.
NICOR is hosted by a commissioning support unit, not part of NHS England itself.
Data are entered by centres and not validated centrally, so local checking matters.

Where Cath Copilot fits

Cath Copilot pre-fills an audit return from the record, with the source of every field, suggests codes with their evidence, and asks the operator or quality lead to confirm each field before the hub builds an extract; only the quality lead can export. In the prototype the dataset and codes are an illustrative subset, and the registry export writes to a local mock outbox.

It is not mapped to the current NAPCI dataset and does not submit to NICOR. A real site would map it to its national audit dataset version. Cath Copilot is a prototype on synthetic data only. It is not a medical device and is not for clinical use.

Questions

Who runs the national PCI audit?

NICOR runs NAPCI as part of the National Cardiac Audit Programme. BCIS collaborates with NICOR on the PCI data.

Is NAPCI part of NCAPOP?

NHS England's 2026-27 Quality Accounts list does not mark the National Cardiac Audit Programme as part of NCAPOP.

Sources

Official pages, checked October 2026. Guidance changes, so check the current version before you rely on it.

General information for healthcare managers and clinical teams, checked October 2026. It is not legal, regulatory or clinical advice; follow the current official guidance and your organisation's own policies. No patient data is used in these examples. Cath Copilot is a prototype running on synthetic data only. It is not a medical device and is not for clinical use. It recommends, drafts, and routes; it never diagnoses, orders, or decides. A clinical safety and information-governance process precedes any use with real patient data.