The Cleft Registry and Audit NEtwork (CRANE) Database has published its 2022 Annual Report.

This report presents results from the prospective audit of children born with cleft lip and/or cleft palate between 2000 and 2021, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

You can also download an infographic of the key findings here, and a summary report for patients and parents/carers here.

The Cleft Registry and Audit NEtwork (CRANE) is a national registry and clinical audit run by the Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU) of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS).

If you have any queries about this report or this programme of work, please contact us.

For more information about the CRANE Database, please visit our FAQs for professionals and the public.

The CRANE Newsletter Issue 2022 (4) is now available to download.

This issue includes information on:

• a new user guide explaining what cleft services need to do to comply with the National Data Opt-out in relation to the CRANE audit and registry;
• upcoming data submission deadlines, including data milestones for 2023;
• new infographics highlighting the key findings from our annual reports – ideal for engaging patients and families; and
• a reminder of our January 2023 ‘Making it Better’ event, which will be an opportunity to reflect on the findings of the forthcoming 2022 Annual Report.

The Newsletter has been emailed to all our known contacts at services that provide cleft care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you would like to be added to our eNewsletter mailing list, please contact us.

The CRANE Newsletter Issue 2022 (3) is now available to download.

This issue includes information on:

• new publications and conference activity from CRANE, including the International Congress of Cleft Lip, Palate and Related Craniofacial Anomalies 2022, held in Edinburgh in July 2022;
• the online Quality Improvement (QI)  events in February and May 2022, plus details of our next event in January 2023 – which will focus on the forthcoming 2022 annual report;
• the next SSQ Dashboard data submission deadline; and
• a reminder of all the resources available to support your data entry and verification.

The Newsletter has been emailed to all our known contacts at services that provide cleft care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you would like to be added to our eNewsletter mailing list, please contact us.

The national data opt-out service allows patients to opt-out of their confidential patient information being used for purposes other than their immediate clinical care. All NHS organisations are required to be compliant with the national data opt-out policy.

Guidance on the deadline for compliance and how to comply is provided on the NHS website: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/national-data-opt-out/operational-policy-guidance-document/compliance-with-the-national-data-opt-out

For national clinical audits such as the CRANE, where families consent to the audit function of CRANE, and registry information is collected with Section 251 approval:

1. Cleft services are advised to continue to verify the consent status of patients, to be able to collect both registry and audit (outcomes) information – as detailed in our information leaflets.

• In addition, the withdrawal of patients’ consent can be implemented at any time by changing the patient’s consent status to ‘No’.

2. An important consideration for cleft services is to remember that CRANE also has a registry function.

• Therefore there is a minimum dataset that CRANE is allowed to collect, on all children born with a cleft, under our Section 251 approval. For a reminder of these data items please consult the CRANE Data Dictionary found in the Resources section of this website.
• Nevertheless, if the parent chooses to opt-out of their child’s confidential patient information being used for purposes other than their immediate clinical care, none of the child’s data should be recorded in CRANE – this includes both registry and audit data.

Please see the flow diagram below for a visual representation of the information above.

You can also download our user guide about the National Data Opt-out.

If you would like further information on how cleft services can ensure they are compliant with the national data opt-out, specifically with regard to the CRANE, please do contact us with your questions.

The dental health outcomes data collection section in CRANE has been updated.

• This reflects changes requested by the Dental CEN.
• To allow the collection of Developmental Defects of Enamel (DDE) data.

What does this mean for Dental Health data collection?

• CRANE continues to collect data on decayed, missing or filled teeth (dmft at 5 years and DMFT at 10 years).
• CRANE now also collects DDE data at 5 and 10 years of age.
  • Please view Dental Health Outcomes Data Entry Guide for further information.
• The CRANE Data Dictionary and associated ​​​​CRANE Data Collection Forms have been updated to reflect these changes.

Contact us if you have any questions about this, as well as if you have suggestions to improve the guide.

The CRANE Newsletter Issue 2022 (2) is now available to download.

This issue includes information on:

• The February 2022 ‘Making it Better’ event, as well as our upcoming ‘CRANE Preliminary Audit Report’ session 9 May 2022,

• our new CRANE Database Demonstration Videos, and

• CRANE at the 14th International Cleft Congress in July 2022!

The Newsletter has been emailed to all our known contacts at services that provide cleft care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you would like to be added to our eNewsletter mailing list, please contact us.

The CRANE Newsletter Issue 2022 (1) is now available to download.

This issue includes information on:

• The latest CRANE Annual Report,

• our upcoming CRANE ‘Making it Better’ Learning event in February 2022,

• resources for Quality Improvement, and

• information about data collection milestones.

The Newsletter has been emailed to all our known contacts at services that provide cleft care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If you would like to be added to our eNewsletter mailing list, please contact us.

The Cleft Registry and Audit NEtwork (CRANE) Database has published its 2021 Annual Report.

This report presents results from the prospective audit of children born with cleft lip and/or cleft palate between 2000 and 2020, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Cleft Registry and Audit NEtwork (CRANE) is a national registry and clinical audit run by the Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU) of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS).

If you have any queries about this report or this programme of work, please contact us.

For more information about the CRANE Database, please visit our FAQs for professionals and the public.

Download the October 2021 CRANE Newsletter here!

This issue includes information on:

• CRANE’s biannual checks – your teams’ contact details

• meet our new team member

• get weekly updates from CRANE – follow us on Twitter

• information about data collection milestones.

Keep us up-to-date with key contacts within your cleft service

We will be in touch twice a year to check that the contact information that we hold for members of your cleft service is correct.

This is to ensure that we are General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant and are not keeping old emails on record, or missing out new team members – especially those responsible for Information Governance (IG) within your team and Trust.​​​​​​​

We hold contact information for people who we have on record as stakeholders working within, and in collaboration with, cleft services

• Our stakeholders include CRANE Database users, CDG members, Clinical Excellence Network (CEN) leads, and people who have asked to receive our Newsletter. All flagged in our records appropriately. We use the contact details we hold for them for the sole purpose of conducting this national audit.
• We have no way of knowing about changes within cleft services – to ensure relevant members receive news about audit deadlines and publications – unless we check or are told directly by their team.

Tell us when staff have left your team and should no longer be allowed to access your team’s CRANE Database records

Once we are informed of this, we can cancel the staff members account, and ensure that we are GDPR compliant with regards to access to patient records.

Tell us about new staff joining your team who need access to the CRANE Database

We have been asked to clarify how this works. Here are the key steps:

• Please ask new staff joining your team to ‘Request an Account’ via our website.
• To ensure we are being GDPR complaint, we will contact the cleft team (where the request originated) to confirm the request has come from a legitimate member of your team.
  • This email will usually be directed to cleft team coordinators and data managers, and copy in the colleague responsible for Information Governance within your team / Trusts (e.g. Clinical Director / Medical Director).
  • Bearing this in mind, please do keep us up-to-date with key contact within your cleft team and trust.
• We are then able to amend our record accordingly, and set up the new staff member’s CRANE Database user account.

For further information about the CRANE Database or to contact us with any queries, please get in touch by phone or email:

•   crane@rcseng.ac.uk
•   020 7869 6139