What is national clinical audit?
Clinical audit (whether this is at the local, regional, national or international level) is an established method of assessing quality.
It involves:
- looking at practice against clinical standards/guidelines; and
- comparing providers' outcomes (as reported by clinicians and/or patients)
National clinical audits:
- have national coverage (completed or planned);
- enable providers (trusts, hospitals, units, teams or practitioners) to be compared in detail;
- collect information on individual patients; and
- do not include reviews of things that went wrong/did not go to plan such as confidential enquiries or case record reviews.
Our national clinical audits have all of these features.