Stage 3: Clinical audit
Assess what your patients need
A clinical audit gathers data to analyse improvements, using a combination of the practice’s clinical software, a clinical audit extraction tool, and manual recording by clinicians. In this step, you will review the data you gathered, and identify activities that can help you follow-up people based on that data.
The clinical audit involves reviewing your patient files. While some of this review can be done by using your data extraction software, there is benefit to manually reviewing individual files.
When you have an individual file open, you can take the opportunity to:
- Update the spreadsheet you created using the register
- Identify risk factors that may not be coded
- Enter ‘actions’ and ‘recalls’
- Ensure the clinical coding is current and complete
The quality improvement process is central to helping you plan these activities – you may also know this as a PDSA cycle.
The quality improvement process
The Hepatitis C Quality Improvement Process generally follows the steps:
- Conduct a clinical audit.
- Record the outcomes of the clinical audit.
- Document the actions you intend to take as a result of your audit findings, and delegate responsibilities.
- Keep evidence of your implementation activities.
- Assess the success of your implementation activities and document your follow-up plans.
The PDSA approach uses a methodical approach to the quality improvement processes you want to pursue. PDSA processes include four steps:
- Plan – define your aims and actions required to achieve them
- Do – conduct the actions identified in step 1
- Study – observe and reflect on the results of the actions in step 2
- Act – document results and plan any additional actions required to achieve the original aim.
Tools
To support your PDSA activities, there are two key resources you will need:
In addition, the Tools and Template page contains several examples of completed PDSA templates that may help inspire your own activities.
As part of the Beyond the C project, you will need to submit your PDSA templates to the project team. Find out more on the Reporting page.
Timing: It’s expected that it will take most practices up to 3 months to complete this step.
Go back to the Project overview
Go on to Stage 4: Test and treat