Smoking: cessation success in people with bipolar, schizophrenia and other psychoses

Indicator type

Network / system level indicator. The indicator would be appropriate to understand and report on the performance of networks or systems of providers.

Rationale

This indicator focuses on smoking cessation success in people with schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder or other psychoses because this population is more likely to smoke than the rest of the population, with smoking prevalence increasing with severity of condition.

Source guidance

Specification

Numerator: The number of patients in the denominator recorded as ex-smokers in the preceding 12 months.

Denominator: The number of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and other psychoses recorded as current smokers in the previous 13 to 48 months.

Example time window: The indicator could look for patients recorded as current smokers between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2023, then search for those recorded as ex-smokers between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.

Calculation: Numerator divided by the denominator, multiplied by 100.

Definitions: None.

Exclusions: None.

Personalised care adjustments or exception reporting should be considered to account for situations where the patient declines to provide their smoking status.

Data source: Data should be available from general practice IT systems.

Expected population size: Analysis of data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) Aurum March 2024 dataset shows a 0.6% prevalence of severe mental illness in England (62 per 10,000 patients) and that 39.4% of those with a smoking status recorded were current smokers (23 per 10,000 patients).

There is no minimum number of patients required for network level indicators. However, consideration should be given to whether the majority of results would require suppression because of small numbers.

ISBN: 978-1-4731-6425-3