Abstract:
This research aims to design and validate a Quality Audit Report (QAR) for clinical audit in general practice chronic disease management. We focus on the suitability of routinely collected Patient Management System (PMS) data as the basis for quality audit statistics. We are working with an expert panel representing the clinicians of a general practice to identify appropriate PMS-derived statistics to provide descriptive, supportive and cautionary characterisations of their chronic disease management. The report development is centring on their management of hypertension and relevant co-morbidities. After several iterations of report development a sample of patients will be reviewed by the expert panel, blind to the patients’ reporting classifications, to assess the sensitivity and specificity of the QAR. Lessons from initial iterations of the QAR development process indicate that the temporal subtlety and explosion of possible reporting statistics are major issues in defining useful quality improvement statistics where contraindications and combination therapies are involved.
