Quality Improvement/Clinical Audit

The purpose of the Scottish Audit of Intracranial Vascular Malformationsis is to monitor the quality of care, treatment, and outcomes for adults with intracranial vascular malformations (arteriovenous and cavernous malformations). SAIVMs does this by using multiple overlapping sources of case ascertainment to find every adult resident in Scotland, who is newly diagnosed with one of the malformations above, and enrolling them in a confidential audit. SAIVMs aims to include every adult in order to get a truly representative picture of what happens to people with your condition in Scotland. The audit involves adults who were first diagnosed in the years 1999-2003, and 2006 onwards. The audit is run by a team in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences in Edinburgh, and is overseen by a Steering Committee of consultants, who are representative of the relevant specialties at the four Scottish Neuroscience centres in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

The Scottish Audit of Surgical Mortality is unique in the United Kingdom. It encompasses nearly all the surgical specialties and all except two eligible Consultant Surgeons and Anaesthetists in Scotland have agreed to participate. SASM identifies all deaths that occur in hospital under the care of a surgeon, whether an operation has taken place or not. SASM forms are completed by the relevant Surgeon and where appropriate Anaesthetist. The forms then undergo a peer review process carried out by virtually every practising clinician within the audited specialties on behalf of their colleagues. Over 1100 consultants participate and approximately 4,500 deaths are reviewed per year.

The Scottish Hip Fracture Audit aims to improve hip fracture care by providing robust nationally comparable data on the care of hip fracture patients.

In addition to core data collection, there are plans to carry out a series of time limited audits. These will allow various areas of hip fracture care to be investigated in more detail.

The Audit has provided the individual orthopaedic departments with a succinct and clear overall description of the complex process of hip fracture care and a means of comparison of the varying multidisciplinary care at different centres. Improvements in the care and rehabilitation of this frail and vulnerable group of patients have been successfully monitored by the audit.

The Scottish Renal Registry is a national registry of patients with renal failure and other renal disorders in Scotland.

In 1991 the Scottish Renal Association obtained a grant from the Clinical Resource and Audit Group of the Scottish Office to establish the SRR. Information on all patients on renal replacement therapy (RRT) in Scotland is transferred, mostly by download from individual Renal Unit computers, to a central computer.

All NHS Renal Units contribute fully.
They compile reports for:

The Scottish Trauma Audit Group (STAG) was set up in 1992 to audit Accident & Emergency services throughout Scotland. This audit ended in 2003.

Since then STAG has been working on a range of projects and are now in the final year of a national audit commissioned by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland: the Scottish Emergency Department Alcohol Audit (SEDAA). The aim of the audit is to describe the burden of disease and provide descriptive epidemiology for all alcohol-related presentations to the Emergency Departments in Scotland.

The Scottish Intensive Care Society Audit Group (SICSAG) has maintained a national database of patients admitted to adult general Intensive Care Units (ICU) in Scotland since 1995. Detailed information is produced on the management of critically ill or injured patients. All Intensive Care Units and combined ICU/High Dependency Units (HDU) collect data and the audit has further expanded to include many High Dependency Units.

In October 2006, SICSAG joined Information Services Division (ISD), part of National Services Scotland (NSS).  Joining ISD has seen the audit benefiting from a significant increase in resources, with a dedicated SICSAG team, clinical support across Scotland from the National Audit Team and IT support from ISD.