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Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre

Participating critical care units submit patient data to the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) as part of this national audit for all NHS adult general intensive care and combined intensive care/high dependency units in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (plus some additional specialist and non-NHS critical care units).

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The primary purpose of this data collection is to assess quality of the care to guide local performance management and quality improvement. The data collected are also used for research purposes, ensuring maximum value from the data collection and validation processes. ICNARC collects and uses the data to enable customers to request regular comparative analyses from the CMP Database (of over 1.5 million admissions to critical care), detailing a range of established potential quality indicators, including:

  • hospital mortality
  • unit-acquired Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
  • non-clinical transfers (out)
  • unplanned readmissions within 48 hours
  • out-of-hours discharges to the ward (not delayed)

ICNARC data also have greater granularity than HES critical care data.

Whilst data is collected by ICNARC for Wales and Northern Ireland, NHS England only receive data for patients in England.

 

Access method The NHS England Secure Data Environment (SDE) service. 
Data set available in packages No
Period of data coverage ICNARC will cover the period of 1 March 2020 onwards
Geographical scope of data England
Legal limitations applied to use None
Linkable to other data sets Yes
Associated data sets Not applicable
Data collection process

Submitted by: Participating critical care units for all NHS adult general intensive care and combined intensive care/high dependency units in England.

Collected by: NHS England

Frequency: Monthly

Clinical coding systems

Standardised systems of coding included in the data set are:

  • ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases classifies diseases and other conditions)
  • SNOMED-CT (a structured clinical vocabulary for use in electronic health records)
  • OPCS-4 (Office of Population Census and Surveys classification of interventions and surgical procedures)
  • Read Code v2 (a coded thesaurus of clinical terms)
  • Read Code Clinical Terms v3 (a coded thesaurus of clinical terms)
Full list of coding systems considered

SNOMED-CT (a structured clinical vocabulary for use in electronic health records).

ICD (International Classification of Diseases classifies diseases and other conditions).

OPCS-4 (Office of Population Census and Surveys classification of interventions and surgical procedures).

dm+d (Dictionary of descriptions and codes which represent medicines and devices in use across the NHS).

NICIP (National Interim Clinical Imaging Procedure provides consistent recording of imaging procedures).

UCUM (Unified Code for Units of Measure is a code system intended to include all units of measurement.

TFCs (Treatment Function Codes are used to record treatment activities undertaken).

Read Code v2 (a coded thesaurus of clinical terms)

Read Code Clinical Terms v3 (a coded thesaurus of clinical terms)

UICC (Union for International Cancer Control classification of cancer by anatomic disease extent).

IMD (Indices of Multiple Deprivation measures relative poverty).

Derived fields

Standardised formulation may be applied across multiple data sets to generate commonly derived fields. This version of the data set does not contain any standard derivations.

Third party licensing

Does the data set require copyrighted clinical assessment tools or outcome measures that require a licence?

Refer to the NCCR tools and measures library for details on applicable licences and how to register.

Advice and support

Governance of this data set is provided by:

  • owning organisation: ICNARC
  • data controller: NHS England
  • data processor: NHS England

NHS England provides a variety of functions for the data sets we make available. Therefore, our knowledge and understanding of the data will vary, affecting the level of advice and support we can provide.

We have acquired this intensive care data from an external third party to enable our use for specific health and care purposes. We may be able to offer some limited guidance.

Supporting documentation and guidance

Last edited: 13 October 2025 10:43 am