Clinical Audit Examples and Tools for Quality Improvement
01 April 2023
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Clinical audits are an essential part of quality improvement processes in patient care. They measure the performance of various aspects of the clinical world to ensure that standards are being kept. In any areas that may not be up to scratch, there must be a structured process to bring about improvements. But how can you ensure that best practices are being followed and that technology is empowering healthcare professionals to improve care outcomes?
Did you know: you can create audits in Radar Healthcare and make scheduling and conducting clinical audits easier. Book a demo today to find out how.
In this blog, we look at the types of clinical audits, and an example of a clinical audit carried out using our software.
Clinical audit definition
According to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 2002, they define clinical audits as:
“Clinical audit is a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change. Aspects of the structure, 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.”
P.S You can easily evidence and carry out important audits and checks using Radar Healthcare’s audit management module
Types of clinical audits
As a healthcare professional, it’s your job to ensure that your patients are receiving the best possible care. That’s where clinical audits come in. The National Health Service (NHS) conducts various types of clinical audits to evaluate and improve the quality of healthcare services provided to patients.
These audits are an essential tool to ensure best practices are being followed. Here are some examples of clinical audits done in the NHS to achieve this goal:
These audits are organised by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) and cover a range of clinical areas, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health. They are aimed at improving patient outcomes, reducing variation in care, and identifying areas for improvement.
These audits are conducted at the local level by individual NHS trusts and hospitals to assess the quality of care provided to patients within their own organisation. They are often used to identify specific areas for improvement and implement changes to improve patient care.
These audits focus on a specific clinical specialty, such as ophthalmology, dermatology, or obstetrics. They are conducted by specialty societies or groups of clinicians who have an interest in improving the quality of care within their field.
These audits focus on identifying and addressing potential risks to patient safety, such as medication errors, hospital-acquired infections, and falls. They are often conducted in collaboration with patient safety organisations and patient representatives.
These audits are part of the overall system of clinical governance within the NHS, which aims to ensure that high-quality care is provided to patients. They assess the quality of clinical services, identify areas for improvement, and ensure that appropriate action is taken to improve patient care.
Overall, clinical audits are an important tool for improving the quality of healthcare services provided by the NHS and ensuring that patients receive safe and effective care.
Our advice? Use intelligent software that brings all of this together, across multiple locations so you can gain complete oversight, using Radar Healthcare’s product modules.
Audits for all healthcare providers
Check out our What The HealthTech podcast below where Chief Product Officer, Mark Fewster discusses the latest features and updates to our audit management tool.
See our audits in action
Are you ready to plan and schedule audits effectively with Radar Healthcare’s audit management tool? Book a free demo and get started today.
Don’t let your audits work in silo
Integrate your existing quality and compliance processes with your audits so that everything’s in one place. Link to action and improvement plans, analytics, and even third-party systems from workforce management and EPRs to ensure nothing is missed and that you can spot performance trends quickly.
Wondering if our audits management tool would work for you? Book a consultation with one of our experts.
How to conduct a clinical audit effectively
Analyse – Gain oversight
Analyse – Gain oversightWant to know what your top ten failed questions are and where you can make most of a difference? Do you want to know where your teams should spend their time to drive positive change and outcomes?
With Radar Healthcare’s analytics dashboard, complete the reports you need on a regular basis, whether locally or nationally, and let the AI and machine-learning do all the hard work for you, alerting you of KPIs in real time so you can easily act and improve patient safety and quality of care.
Action plans – Drive organisational learning
Action plans – Drive organisational learningShare the audit results with your relevant stakeholders, including clinical teams, service users, and management, and develop an action plan to address any issues identified through Radar Healthcare’s audit management tool.
Schedule audits (re-audit) – Complete regular checks
Revaluate the impact of any changes made based on previous audit results and action plans you’ve put in place. Embed the audit process into routine clinical practice and promote a culture of continuous quality improvement using our other modules. Use the results and the action plan to address any areas for improvement, such as providing additional training using Radar Healthcare’s workforce and document management modules.
Example of hand hygiene compliance audit
Auditing doesn’t have to be difficult, with modern AI-driven software like Radar Healthcare, you can carry out clinical audits digitally so that it’s easy to track progress, make improvements and refer back to historical audits when the need arises.
As shown by this hand hygiene audits example, you can include questions in which there is a set response type of ‘Pass,’ ‘Fail,’ or ‘NA’ but it won’t be included in the score of your audit.
When your staff are completing the audit, it’s easy for them to click their answer, and upload any supporting evidence in the form of images or documents.
You can also preview the audit in real-time before publishing live. There’s also the option to integrate an action plan as you go, based on the response. For instance, if the auditor answers ‘Fail’ to that particular question, they can build an action and improvement plan instantaneously.
Radar Healthcare supports all healthcare audits, with clinical just being one type.
Below is an example of what your audit list can look like, where you can see the status of audits and their results in one place. If a score isn’t as expected, Radar Healthcare will alert relevant staff to begin the necessary action plan to bring scores and therefore the quality of care back up.
