McVey, L orcid.org/0000-0003-2009-7682, Alvarado, N orcid.org/0000-0001-9422-4483, Keen, J orcid.org/0000-0003-2753-8276 et al. (8 more authors) (2021) Institutional use of National Clinical Audits by healthcare providers. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 27 (1). pp. 143-150. ISSN 1356-1294
Abstract
Rationale, aims, and objectives
Healthcare systems worldwide devote significant resources towards collecting data to support care quality assurance and improvement. In the United Kingdom, National Clinical Audits are intended to contribute to these objectives by providing public reports of data on healthcare treatment and outcomes, but their potential for quality improvement in particular is not realized fully among healthcare providers. Here, we aim to explore this outcome from the perspective of hospital boards and their quality committees: an under‐studied area, given the emphasis in previous research on the audits' use by clinical teams.
Methods
We carried out semi‐structured, qualitative interviews with 54 staff in different clinical and management settings in five English National Health Service hospitals about their use of NCA data, and the circumstances that supported or constrained such use. We used Framework Analysis to identify themes within their responses.
Results
We found that members and officers of hospitals' governing bodies perceived an imbalance between the benefits to their institutions from National Clinical Audits and the substantial resources consumed by participating in them. This led some to question the audits' legitimacy, which could limit scope for improvements based on audit data, proposed by clinical teams.
Conclusions
Measures to enhance the audits' perceived legitimacy could help address these limitations. These include audit suppliers moving from an emphasis on cumulative, retrospective reports to real‐time reporting, clearly presenting the “headline” outcomes important to institutional bodies and staff. Measures may also include further negotiation between hospitals, suppliers and their commissioners about the nature and volume of data the latter are expected to collect; wider use by hospitals of routine clinical data to populate audit data fields; and further development of interactive digital technologies to help staff explore and report audit data in meaningful ways.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | clinical audit; clinical governance; clinical safety; health services research |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Healthcare (Leeds) > Nursing Adult (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine (LICAMM) > Clinical & Population Science Dept (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (Leeds) > Centre for Health Services Research (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Sociology and Social Policy (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NIHR National Inst Health Research 16/04/06 Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership HQIP NCA 2009 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 28 Apr 2020 09:27 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/jep.13403 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:159202 |