It is imperative that women in New Zealand know they can trust the cervical screening programme.

Ongoing, systematic monitoring against performance indicators is one of a range of monitoring systems the National Screening Unit (NSU) uses to ensure its programmes are working well.  Such monitoring allows the performance of the Programme to be evaluated and corrective action to be taken as required.

At regular intervals, anonymised data of women enrolled on the National Cervical Screening Programme Register (NCSP-Register) is analysed against a set of key indicators and targets which cover all aspects of the screening pathway, including participation by women, their clinical outcomes, NCSP provider performance and the Programme overall.  As appropriate, the data is analysed in relation to ethnicity, age group, district health board or laboratory.

NCSP biannual monitoring reports are reviewed by a multidisciplinary advisory and monitoring group representing NCSP providers and consumers (refer NCSP Advisory Group).  The group may make recommendations to the NSU for follow-up actions.

From Report 30 (July - December 2008) onwards, monitoring has been undertaken with the technical assistance of the Cancer Council of New South Wales (CCNSW).  This has coincided with use of a  new reporting format, incorporating more explicit definitions and utilising data from the newly developed NCSP Register, so earlier reports are not fully comparable with Report 30 onwards.  Technical information on the indicator set for Report 30 onwards is available here in the working document Technical specifications for calculating the indicators.

The Cancer Council is contractually required to meet the National Kaitiaki Regulations (opens in new window).

Reports between 2003 - 2008 were prepared by the Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University, and reports prior to this were prepared by the University of Otago.

Monitoring reports were produced quarterly from December 2000 to June 2007 (Report 27); and six monthly thereafter.

Further information about the monitoring and performance of the NCSP is available on request from the NCSP Programme Leader:

Email: Mihikore_Andrews@moh.govt.nz

Phone: (09) 580 9025