PHECC Clinical Audit Standard

In November 2014 PHECC Council approved the PHECC Clinical Audit Standard. This standard was published by the HSE Quality and Patient Safety Directorate in 2013 and is a practical guide to clinical audit in the healthcare environment.  

 Very simply it outlines what clinical audit is, best practice in how it should be implemented and appendix 7 provides very good guidance on how a clinical audit report should be prepared, including a sample template. 

All licensed CPG providers apply to PHECC annually for approval to implement CPG’s. The recognition process rules include the completion of a Statutory Declaration under which, licensed CPG providers agree that, if recognition is granted, a summary of the clinical audits completed during the previous twelve months will be included in the CPG report. In addition the application must include details of a minimum of three clinical audits undertaken in the previous year. Our new standard will assist you in preparation for your clinical audit submissions. 

Last year we facilitated a two day "Information Seminar". This included presentations by experts on data collection and management of the resulting information and knowledge, followed on day two by a clinical audit workshop, which outlined the principles of clinical audit using a case study and audience engagement with expert Dr Ian Callanan, Clinical Audit coordinator at St Vincent’s Hospital and Chair of National Clinical Audit Advisory Group 2011-2012. 

In March of this year, the Quality and Safety Committee facilitated a Clinical Audit workshop and engaged Dr Ian Callanan again who presented on the stages of clinical audit, emphasising the importance of standard data collection tools and measuring performance against audit criteria. PHECC would like to reiterate this point and recommend that the PCR, ACR or CFR Report be the clinical audit data collection tools and the current edition of the CPG’s be the standard and audit criteria against which the audit will be conducted.  

Please do not hesitate to contact the office at j.egan@phecc.ie  if you need further guidance on the implementation of clinical audit in your service.