National Neonatal Audit Programme (NNAP) measures

The audit reports on key measures of the process and outcomes of neonatal care and supports professionals, families and commissioners to improve the care provided to babies requiring specialist treatment. In particular, we report outcomes of neonatal care, measures of optimal perinatal care, maternal breastmilk feeding, measures of parental partnership, neonatal nurse staffing, and other important care processes.

The NNAP Project Board conducts a regular review of the NNAP dataset and audit measures in close consultation with the wider neonatal community, taking note of the publication or amendment of any relevant professional guidance and/or standards.

The NNAP project team notifies participating neonatal networks and units of any changes to the audit dataset, prior to those changes being implemented.

2023 audit measures

The NNAP 2023 audit measures guide is available to download below. This guide contains a shortlist of the NNAP measures for 2023; the final set of measures to be reported on for 2023 data will be communicated in due course as soon as they are confirmed. Please consider the guide provisional at this point.

Key changes for the 2023 data year:

  • Overall inclusion criteria amended to include babies born at a gestational age of 22 weeks or more
  • Addition of two composite measures, derived from existing measures with no additional data collection:
    • Proportion of babies at less than 34 weeks receiving all relevant optimal perinatal care measures
    • Proportion of babies born between 24 and 31 weeks gestation inclusive who did not have reported serious complication of prematurity (late onset infection, NEC, BPD, serious preterm brain injury and mortality).
  • Promoting normal temperature on admission for very preterm babies - The upper gestational age cut-off has been increased from 32 weeks to 34 weeks, in line with MatNeoSIP measurement.
  • Mortality to discharge in very preterm babies - The NNAP will additionally report mortality at 22 and 23 weeks gestational age, however this group will not be included In reporting against the improvement goal.
  • Parental inclusion in consultant ward rounds - The first part of the measure has been removed and there is now only one part to the measure: “What proportion of baby care days had a consultant-led ward round with at least one parent included?”

For more information about these changes, and all other measures within the 2023 data year, download the provisional guide to the 2023 audit measures below. We expect to release an updated version of the measures guide in the next few weeks. 

2022 audit measures

We made a number of changes to the audit measures reported for 2022 data. We did this to align as closely as possible with other measurement programmes, and in particular MatNeoSIP, and in line with current guidance and guidelines. We also changed the cohort of babies included for some of the measures to improve the timeliness and frequency of reporting.

Download the 2022 measures guide below

ROP screening calculator

Our Excel calculator is designed to help you plan timing of first retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) screening appointment for eligible babies. This is based on the screening guideline (2022).

Download the ROP screening calculator below

Audit measures from previous years

Download guides to audit measures for 2021 and 2022 below

Data dictionaries

The full data dictionary for the 2022 reporting year was published in February 2023. The full data dictionary for the 2021 reporting year was published in November 2022.

Download data dictionaries below