New podcast: Exploring NACEL and What We Can Learn from the Audit with Dr Mary Miller

We’re delighted to share that our NACEL Clinical Lead, Dr Mary Miller, recently joined Dr Clare Fuller for the Speak For Me podcast to discuss the importance of Advance Care Planning and what can be learnt from the National Audit of Care at the End of Life (NACEL) 2024.

The discussion highlights findings from the latest round of NACEL showing that fewer than half of patient records included evidence of Advance Care Planning. Dr Mary Miller reflects on the importance of open and early planning conversations to ensure that people’s wishes and preferences are understood and respected at the end of life.

🎧 Listen now: Holding Uncertainty – Exploring NACEL and what we can learn from the audit with Dr Mary Miller 

Published 10 November 2025 

🔗 https://speakforme.co.uk/podcast-episode-141  

Now launched: NACEL 2026

The NACEL 2026 Audit Guidance document and data specifications can now be accessed via the link below

Reminder: Please check your organisation's registration details and inform the team if there are any changes required for NACEL 2026

NACEL 2026 Warm Up Event 

The Warm Up Event for NACEL 2026 took place on Thursday 23rd October. During this session, a summary of the updates and changes made to NACEL 2026 were presented.

If you weren't able to attend or would like to recap any of the information shared, the slides and recording are available on the NACEL Portal Events page.

Case Note Review SNOMED Code pilot

Ahead of data collection for NACEL 2026 opening in January, the NACEL Team would like to encourage any organisations who use electronic systems and may be able to contribute to sense-checking SNOMED codes for the Case Note Review to get in touch with the team for further information.

This exercise is intended to verify that the list of SNOMED codes included within the Case Note Review is complete and accurate, to streamline data collection as much as possible in NACEL 2026

Recently published: NACEL Healthcare Improvement Plan and Impact Reports

We are pleased to share that the following documents have been published on the NACEL Portal QI pages:

• NACEL 2026 Healthcare Improvement Plan - this document is designed to help stimulate improvement at local, regional and national levels and has been updated in 2025 in line with the NACEL 2024 findings and national recommendations.

• NACEL 2024/25 Impact Report - this report demonstrates the impact that NACEL has had, at a national, system, local and public level, throughout 2024/25

• NACEL 2024/25 'QI in Focus' Impact Report - this report highlights the QI outputs offered by NACEL and engagement with them, showcasing examples of the impact of NACEL on QI in hospitals

Quality Improvement Updates

Reporting resources

New reporting templates have been added to the NACEL Portal Quality Improvement pages. The NACEL Team would like to say thank you to those who have shared their reporting templates, including Amy Cresswell and team at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, for their hard work in compiling these reports and allowing us to share them.

If any other participants have created a template that they feel others would benefit from seeing, please do share them with us; we will anonymise them and upload them to our website for the NACEL community.

Alongside the reporting templates, the QI pages of the NACEL Portal have resources to help with reporting your results to date, such as our mapping documents which outline the metrics that align to the NACEL primary and secondary drivers and the five NACEL improvement goals.

If you want to see a live update of your Trust/Health Board's data submitted to date, take a look at the NACEL Data and Improvement Tool: