Clinical Audit, why review matters

Clinical audit is a regular review process used to improve patient care and outcomes and promote good quality of life, based on the best available evidence.

When the CQC review our clinical audit processes focus on a number of areas, including:

• Whether staff follow JRCALC national guidelines and NICE guidelines.
• How a person’s pain is assessed and managed, particularly for those people where there are difficulties in communicating.
• Benchmarking against similar services, and,
• What quality improvement initiatives, such as national clinical audits are in place and how we use data/information to drive improvements.

You can find out more about Clinical Audit here, or by emailing the Clinical Audit team at CQC.Group@eastamb.nhs.uk.

How are we doing?
During the last core inspection in 2019, the CQC did not highlight any areas of concern in relation to patient outcomes. As a Trust we are performing in line or above the national average for all Ambulance Clinical Quality Indicators (ACQIs) which are a national benchmarking system used to assess all Ambulance Trusts in England in terms of quality of care and speed of response.

However, we have recognised that there are a number of areas where we do still need to improve such as; the sepsis care bundle, pain relief for STEMI patients and reducing the cycle time from call to arrival at hospital for stroke patients, which instigated the 10:10 posters.

Unfortunately, due to the increase in the volume of both paper records and requirements for ACQIs, previously identified local audit topics were not able to be completed within 2020/21

Our next steps
We have enhanced our audit programme for 2021/22 and includes topics prompted from a range of drivers such as patient feedback, incidents, the introduction of new treatments (such as using Biatain dressings for wound closure) and our Learning Disability and Autism Strategy which was launched in 2020. 

 Our clinical audit programme has been identified as a priority within our Quality Account for this year.

We are currently working with our IT team to:

• Transfer data from ePCRs to improve our audit processes, capacity and quality.
• Introduce Power BI reports for our ACQIs.

Care bundle indicators have been built in to the new ePCR as mandatory fields with a view to improving compliance. Regular audit completion will show progress relating to this area in the future.

Staff will continue to use the latest JRCALC guidance, now available electronically through personal issue iPads. Work has commenced on developing z-cards to assist communications with patients.

Thank you
Although there are some areas for improvement, there is also a lot of brilliant work happening across the Trust. We want to thank all of you for continuing to deliver high standards of quality of care to all our patients.

The Clinical Audit Team