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Locally organised medical audit in histopathology
1Department of Histopathology, Southampton General Hospital.
Insights
Implementing straightforward local medical audit systems in histopathology departments is crucial for quality improvement. These systems offer direct benefits and should be managed efficiently with clear dissemination strategies.
Area of Science:
- Medical Diagnostics
- Healthcare Management
Background:
- Hospitals in the United Kingdom face increasing requirements for medical audit.
- Histopathology departments are subject to these audit requirements.
- External quality assurance systems exist but local audit schemes offer distinct advantages.
Purpose of the Study:
- To outline the principles and implementation of local medical audit systems in histopathology departments.
- To emphasize the benefits of tailored local audit strategies over solely relying on external quality assurance.
Main Methods:
- Establishing a dedicated audit strategy for individual histopathology laboratories.
- Securing advance funding for the audit system.
- Designing a straightforward and manageable local audit process.
- Creating a forum for presenting audit results and addressing identified inadequacies.
Main Results:
- Local audit systems can be effectively managed if kept straightforward.
- Direct benefits from local schemes can complement external quality assurance.
- Proactive correction of detected inadequacies is a key outcome.
Conclusions:
- Histopathology departments should develop and implement their own local medical audit systems.
- Local audits should be designed for ease of management and clear reporting.
- Dissemination of audit findings to administrative staff is important for institutional improvement.
Abstract:
The principles behind medical audit are straightforward, and histopathology departments are not exempt from the increasing requirement for audit in hospitals throughout the United Kingdom. Participation in a local audit scheme can offer more direct benefits than those which may be achieved by participation in a diagnosis based external quality assurance system, but the two are not incompatible. Histopathology Departments should establish their own system, developing an audit strategy for their particular laboratory and obtaining funding in advance. The experience gained from Southampton would suggest that such local systems are best kept fairly straightforward, so that they can be managed readily and do not become too onerous. Individual departments should institute a forum for presenting the results of their audit, and should consider how they might go about correcting any inadequacies detected by their system. It is also important for a department to decide on the extent up which their findings are to be disseminated more widely, in particular to the administration and managerial staff of their institute.