Clinical Audit

1
Clinical Audit
Linda ChadburnGovernance Manager
2
Definitions of Clinical Audit

• Definition endorsed by
• National Institute for Health and Clinical
  Excellence (NICE)
• Clinical audit is a quality improvement process
  that
• seeks to improve the patient care and outcomes
  through
• systematic review of care against explicit
  criteria and the
• implementation of change. Aspects of the
  structures,
• processes and outcomes of care are selected and
• systematically evaluated against explicit
  criteria.
• Where indicated, changes are implemented at an
• individual team, or service level and further
  monitoring is
• used to confirm improvement in healthcare
  delivery.

3
Essentially

• Clinical audit is about checking whether best
  practice is being followed and making
  improvements if there are shortfalls in the
  delivery of care.
• A good clinical audit will identify (or
  confirm) problems and lead to effective changes
  that result in improved patient care.

4
Large organisations such as National Institute of
Health and Clinical Excellence and the NHS
Litigation Authority tell us what we should be
doing
Governance, amongst others, make sure we do what
these organisations say
Clinical Audit is used to monitor what we are
doing and feed back to Governance and Health Care
Commission
5
Benefits of Clinical Audit

• Identifies and promotes good practice
• Leads to improvements in service delivery and
  outcomes
• Provides evidence that service is effective
• Provides evidence that service is developing
• Provides opportunities for training and education

6
The Clinical Audit Cycle

• The clinical audit cycle follows a systematic
  process
• establishing best practice,
• measuring care against criteria, taking action to
  improve care
• and monitor to sustain improvement.
• Described as a spiral
• aspires to a higher level of quality on each turn
  of the cycle.

7
The Clinical Audit Cycle
Guidelines
Evidence
Patient and public involvement
What are we trying to achieve
Outcomes
Consensus
Process re-design
Benchmarking
Sampling
Have we made things better
Why are we achieving it
Data analysis
Questionnaire design
Monitoring
Data collection
Doing something to make things better
Why are we not achieving it
Facilitation
Process re-design
Continuous quality improvement
Change management
Benchmarking
8
The Clinical Audit Spiral
9
Data Collection

• Data sources
• Most advantageous source
• Pilot audit
• Relevant information
• Accurate information
• valid and reliable data

10
Data Collection Tool
11
Data Analysis

• Use manual methods
• Use calculators
• Use excel worksheets
• Keep it simple and easy to understand

12
Presentation of Data

• Clear, easy to understand and concise
• Chart representative to the data
• Tables

13
Clinical Audit InformationAll information will
be

• Open and transparent
• Accessible and easy to understand
• Accurate
• Timely

14
For More Information

• Linda Chadburn
• Governance Manager
• 0151 471 2659
• Linda.Chadburn_at_merseycare.nhs.uk
• http//www.merseycare.nhs.uk