Through a series of focus sessions, panel discussions, masterclasses and poster presentations, this two-day conference brings together leading practitioners, clinicians, policy makers and academics, to set out the major developments, promote innovative areas of work, and debate the key challenges affecting delegates and their organisation.

The conference will focus on Clinical Audit Improvement at a Local Level and making Clinical Audit work for the Board.  Alongside the main conference are practical masterclasses on the most important issues impacting on Clinical Audit Leads and Managers.

Masterclasses include:

1. Legal
2. Action planning
3. Cross sector pathway audit
4. Junior Doctors Clinical Audit
5. Training and educating clinical audit
6. Mortality Audit
7. Clinical Audit for Patient Safety
8. Social Care Audit

Further information and to book a delegate place.

• Find out more about our patient experience survey and clinical audit survey solutions
• Find out more about the National Heathcare Conference in Dublin

Extensive information on hospital death rates, the individual performance of surgeons and GPs and overall patient experience is to be published in order to improve standards.

Data will be published in regards to ‘Patient Experience’ – see below:

PATIENT EXPERIENCE

44 Patient experience of GP services; GP out-of-hours services; NHS dental services; hospital care (overarching indicators).

45 Patient experience of outpatient services.

46 How well hospitals respond to in-patients’ personal needs (ie basic care   such as help with eating and going to the lavatory).

47 Patient experience of A&E.

48 Ease of access to GP services and NHS dental services.

49 Women’s experience of maternity services.

50 A measure of the experience of end-of-life care (by asking bereaved   carers).

51 Patient experience of community mental health services.

52 Children’s/young people’s experience of health care.

Following this news, the area of monitoring patient experience, treatments, feedback and the setting and achieving of clinical audit and patient experience objectives will become of increasing focus for NHS Trusts. Whilst most Trusts already have teams in place that are experienced in clinical audit and statistical analysis, these have been predominantly focussed on gathering information from internal clinical sources.  The switch in emphasis toward patient feedback will mean that processes will have to be put in place for designing and processing patient surveys in volume, whilst ensuring the quality of the data.

Formic makes it easy for NHS Trusts to collect data ‘at the point of experience’ and facilitates the delivery of highly robust, proven and fit-for-purpose solutions including solutions for Patient Experience Surveys on Tablet PC, Kiosks, Touch Screen, Web and Mobile Devices.

To find out how your NHS Hospital or GP Surgery can meet the challenge of providing openness, transparency and comparability of information to the patient, Download our FREE Whitepaper: Putting the Patient at the Centre of the NHS.

 The event will enable all juniors selected by the review panel to showcase their clinical audit work and for participants full details of the competition are available by clicking here.

The event will take place at Devonshire Place in Leicester. This is an excellent venue situated just two minutes from Leicester train station with 80 free onsite car parking spaces available. To find out more about accessing the venue, please click here.

The cost of attending the conference is just £100 plus VAT for junior doctors taking part in the competition and just £125 plus VAT for all other delegates.

The Clinical Audit Support Centre is currently offering a 10% discount to all those who book in groups of 2 delegates or more.

 To obtain the relevant booking form for the event, please click here. If you require any other information with regard to the event, please email the CASC team via info@clinicalauditsupport.com

Around 120 delegates from NHS Trusts across the North West region are expected to attend.  Sessions for demonstrations on Formic Fusion software will be available early morning (from 9.00 till 9.45), mid morning (11.00 till 11.30) and during the long lunch break (12.30 till 13.30)

For further information, please email: sara.clark@formic.com

This meas that clinical audit and patient experience teams need to provide their NHS Trust Boards with more comprehensive, qualitative information than ever before.  However, despite some progress, there are, within Trusts, still some barriers to overcome in order to achieve effective clinical audit and patient experience surveys:

Resistance - Within the NHS the terms clinical audit or patient experience can elicit a variety of negative responses, primarily: frustration, misunderstanding and very rarely enthusiasm.  However, under good management and with the right tools and systems in plac, clinical audit can achieve important and measurable improvements in patient care as a matter of routine.

Organisational culture – Many clinicians and managers fear that participation in clinical audit will lead to punishment of poor performers or even litigation.  NHS organisations need to make it clear that it is safe to reveal mistakes and that, as a result, lessons can be learnt.

Information requirements need re-addressing – Continual improvement of clinical service quality depends on accurate clinical information being availble to clinicians, managers, service users and the public.  This information can come from a variety of sources, which may include: internal IT management systems, patient focus groups, surveys, specific databases and routine audits. Frequently, information needs must be reassessed and systems identified, to provide the information in a way that makes it useful.

Inefficiency – Although the adoption of technology solutions has increased in the NHS over the last 20 years, many departments continue to run independently of each other, preventing the free-flow of communication.  Some clinical audit departments continue to process audits and survey forms with inefficient manual systems. Now is the time for them to adopt a comprehensive Trust-wide approach to information collection, that minimises clerical effort and utilises modern technology in a way that both improves the quality, timeliness and availability of this critical information.

Low prioritisation – Previous to the recent Government Whitepaper, clinical audit has been a low priority for some NHS organisations, often seen as time-consuming, not relevant and expensive.  Some Chief Executives and Trust Boards have rarely considered clinical audit as an organisational priority so instead, topics for clinical audit have been identified and undertaken according to departmental preference.  As a result, the data is rarely shared across the organisation.

Lack of investment – Low prority leads to a lack of investment, both in terms of adequate staffing and supporting systems, as well as necessary administrative resourcesw. 

All of these barriers to clinical audit must be addressed if NHS Trust are to achieve the Government’s ambitious objectives.  Good quality, accessible data is essential to effectively support management and bring about improvements in patient care and outcomes.

Formic works in partnership with hospitals and healthcare professionals in order to deliver highly robust, proven and fit-for-purpose clinical audit and patient experience survey solutions.

Click here to find out more.

This latest version includes many new features that will help NHS Trusts and other organisations to manage their audit and survey projects more efficiently and effectively:

• Fully compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7
• 64 bit and 32 bit compatible
• Compatible with SQL Server 2005/8
• All projects/images/results stored in single SQL Server database
• Many performance improvements
• Named users can access Fusion from multiple workstations
• Browser-based access to the Fusion system (Enterprise version only

For further information, contact Gemma Males on 0870 197 5608 or email gemma.males@formic.com

Back in 2001 every NHS Trust had to put measures into place to gather information about infectin on their wards and across their hospitals.  At that time, a report by the National Audit Office came to a series of conclusions including:

• That there was a basic lack of comparable information about the rates of HAI
• That over 60% of healthcare teams complained of a basic lak of clerical resources to support them
• That there was a lack of computer software and hardware to provide effective surveillance of infection control
• That infection control teams should spend more time on planned surveillance activities
• That surveillance was central to reducing infection rates and therefore needed to be done effectively

In 2011 MRSA and CDI infections are now at their lowest rates since records began.

It could be argued therefore, that the best cure for hospital acquired infections may not be antibiotics or disinfectant on the wards, but the use of controls, involving the timely delivery of surveillance data.  If you gather the information about the incidence of infection and then feed it back to the medicaol team, the Board, and now (more recently) the public, the number of case drop.

To find out more…

Download your FREE copy of our Whitepaper

• Improved efficiency in data collection
• A solution that is used by Clinical Audit, PPI, Public Health Directorate, and can be deployed to other departments in the future
• Wireless Tablet PC/mobile handset technology that enables patient feedback out in the community

The results of which mean: a standardisation of data capture across Somerset Community Health, the speeding up of the clinical audit and patient evaluation cycle, questionnaires that meet set standards, improving response rates from 10% to 85%, and a cost-effective and secure method of data collection.

The need for efficient data collection

The accurate, efficient and cost-effective capture of information, its management, analysis and sharing is critical to a health service’s ability to monitor and improve patient car and subsequently patient satisfaction.  A solution that can automatically scan, read and extract information from any paper form and, with a click of a button, send it electronically to a project database or other clinical system will make huge efficiency gains for the data capture team and NHS targets.  A solution that captures and provides data feedback remotely from a PDA, tablet PC, or other hand held device can bring even more benefit.

Mark Stacey, Somerset Community Health Risk Manager, is involved with incident management and patient safety projects and understands the need for higher efficiency in data capture.

“The wireless tablet PCs have been a success in the community hospitals; we can send questionnaires and audits to these mobile devices, allowing staff to quickly and easily colect data for a variety of projects including patient feedback upon discharge.  The nurses like them because they look and operate like a normal computer and are happy to show patients how to use the pen-like stylus and eraser.  There is even a built-in camera and scanner for positive patient identificatin that could be utilised in the future.”

Click here to download the full case study.

“This was a huge piece of work that could not have been done without using Formic Fusion scanning software, due to the sheer scale of the project.”

 Jim Chapman, Clinical Audit and Quality Manager, Sheffield Health & Social Care Foundation Trust.

Sheffield Health & Social Care Foundation Trust is the main provider of a wide range of specialist health and social care services to individuals and their carers or families in Sheffield.

The Trust provides:

• Mental health services for adults and older people
• Services for people with learning disabilities
• Services for people with drug and alcohol problems
• A wide range of other specialist services, such as for people accessing maternal mental health, gender dysphoria services and psychology for people with physical health problems

THE PROBLEM

On an annual basis the Trust has to submit a Trust-wide Records Audit.  This is for the NHS Litigation Authority and is to ensure that the Trust has an appropriate standard of documentation.  In reference to the Nursing Times 2009, ‘Good record keeping is essential for patient care and safety.  Health professionals should be able to look in the notes and continue caring for the patient in a seamless continuum.  If a named professional was unable to return to work, then from the patient’s point of view, this should make no difference to the care they receive.’

THE SOLUTION

The audit proforma was designed using Formic Fusion software to meet the requirements of the NHS Litigation Authority and The Care Quality Commission. It included clinical input from the teams and directorates, 64 of who were involved in the initial audit 2008/2009.

Jim Chapman, Audit & Knowledge Manager, Sheffield Health & Social Care Foundation Trust, explains the results: “Following the initial audit, data was analysed in SPSS and all teams were sent a laminated card of the results.  Teams were also sent an electronic web link that they could cut and paste into their team reports.  The audit results were presented at numerous forums and this gave teams the opportunity to benchmark.

The audit was then repeated in 2010. This was a huge piece of work that could not have been done without using Formic Fusion scanning software, due to the sheer scale of the project.”

The project included:

• 340 data collection forms
• 65 questions on each form
• 7 page (duplex) form
• 2380 pages to scan

Following the re-audit in 2010 there were 15 significant improvements in practice and 5 significant reductions.

CONCLUSIONS

The audit will be repeated again in 2011.  There were further areas of documentation for the Trust to improve upon, including:

• Maintaining links with the service user in the care plan
• Discussing risk assessment at MDT
• Assigning names to action plans in the risk assessment
• Documenting the level of risk
• Keeping in contact with the service user
• Advance directives, HoNOS, asking about abuse, advising GPs and copying letters to patients.

LESSONS LEARNED

“This has been an excellent project because it was not just about ‘ticking the box’ and ‘feeding the beast’.  Teams were involved in the project and actually audited each other to remove bias.  All teams received laminated cards and a web based copy of their results.”

“The challenge for this year will be to make the project more multidisciplinary.  In the most recent audit, we used the actual form designing in Formic Fusion, as opposed to a form designed on the legacy module.  This made scanning easier.  We also had all of the forms printed externally.

Overall the audit has shown improvements and there are further areas to work on.  It is an evolving audit tool that will be reviewed and amended again this year, before the 2011 audit is carried out.  Getting the Chief Executive to put his name on the covering letter also gave the project plenty of kudos.”