Audit in the British National Health Service

This paper is about audit as it exists inside the broader framework of quality control within the National Health Service. It will define medical audit briefly and examine its antecedents in exploring why it was introduced. The paper will proceed to analyse the underlying economic and political reasons for the Government's strategy for audit, and assesses its contribution to the debate about quality in health care. The paper concludes by considering the future direction of audit arising out of the recent emphasis placed on multi-professional clinical audit.