Birth years to be included in 2024 CRANE annual report

We are pleased to announce that from this year’s CRANE annual report, we will be returning to the pre-pandemic practice of reporting on 5-year outcomes of births from 3 grouped years.

This means that the 2024 CRANE report will analyse 5-year outcomes for births in 2015–17.

Due to the impact of the pandemic on some units’ capacity for audit activity, the CRANE annual reports in 2021–23 deviated from this pattern.

• Rather than reporting on births in 2010–13 as planned, the 2020 annual report looked back at 10 years of data;
• In 2021 we reported on 2011–13 births plus a summary of 2014 births (rather than reporting on 2012–14 births in full); while
• In 2022 we reported on 2012–14 births plus a summary of 2015 births (rather than reporting on 2012–15 births in full).
• In 2023 we reported on 2014–16 births plus a summary of 2017 births (rather than reporting on 2012–17 births in full).

Following consultation with the Chair of the Cleft Development Group (CDG), we have agreed it is appropriate to address the time-lag in reporting for 2024. This will be mirrored in the reporting of registrations, which for the 2024 reports will be for the period 2021–23.

Cleft units should therefore be prepared to provide data on the following in 2024, in line with the data collection milestones for 2024:

• 5-year outcomes for births in 2015–17; and
• Registrations of births in 2021–23.

The first deadline for data submissions is 3 April 2024, when an extract will be taken to inform the preliminary report.

More information about data items collected by CRANE can be found in the Data Dictionary and in the information about the indicators submitted for the quarterly Specialised Services Quality (SSQ) Dashboard.

Please contact us with any queries about the eligible birth years for the 2024 report.