Clinical service review and audit provides a systematic way of reviewing current practice in relation to best practice, reviewing compliance with existing policy, making quality improvements, improving outcomes for patients, measuring the impact of changes made together with the potential to release substantial savings where procedures are undertaken outside national guidance or commissioning policy eligibility requirements.
What we do
SPH offers a full service for local and national clinical service review and audit, including:
- Provision of independent consultant level clinicians or senior GPs experienced in clinical service review and audit
- Development and use of bespoke audit tools to capture findings in detail at individual patient level where appropriate (e.g. secondary care compliance with patient eligibility criteria)
- Analysis of data records in primary or secondary care to identify opportunities for pathway development (e.g. root cause of delays in cancer pathways)
- Identifying systematic failures in patient pathways and root causes
- Leading and facilitating workshops with primary care, secondary care and commissioner stakeholders to identify and develop opportunities for pathway improvement based on audit findings
- Cash-leasing savings arising directly from clinical audit
- No risk, gain-share engagement options
Why choose SPH?
- SPH has a wide range of experience of undertaking clinical service review and audit
- SPH is an independent NHS organisation and our consultant level senior clinicians are highly experienced and able to engage confidently and credibly with their clinical peers across primary and secondary care
- We are prepared to consider no risk gain-share contracting arrangements where savings can be directly linked to audit activity; one of our secondary care clinical audits for an STP group of CCGs identified an aggregate annualised value of £1.9m for non-compliant procedures across 2 NHS Trusts and 3 non-NHS providers for primary hip and knee replacement, spinal injections, cataracts and grommets
- Our audit activity has led directly to the release of savings and development of opportunities to improve pathways
- Our clinical service review and audit experience includes:
- Auditing of patient notes to determine secondary care compliance with commissioning policy (releasing savings and identifying opportunities to improve quality of care)
- Condition specific studies (e.g. breast cancer care against standards for care)
- Service review of referral practices (e.g. primary care cancer audit)
- Diagnostic pathway auditing to identify pathway delays and their root causes (e.g. audit of 62 day cancer pathway)
- Auditing use of particular drugs against guidance to ensure appropriate prescribing and access to treatments
As an example, our case study ‘Clinical Audit in Secondary Care’ summarises an audit of secondary care providers undertaking a range of procedures which SPH was commissioned to deliver by an STP group of CCGs.
For further information please get in touch via our contact page.