Highly detailed surgical audits can be produced very quickly, in addition to audits for x-ray meetings, pathology meetings, and daily handover.

One of the more onerous aspects of the job as Surgical Registrar is collating the Unit audit. SURGbase simplifies this task, and makes auditing of patients remarkably simple. The information entered into SURGbase is presented in reports that can be placed onto overheads, distributed during audit meetings, or exported to Microsoft Word, and then to Microsoft Powerpoint.

Examples of SURGbase reports used in surgical auditing include:

1. Case totals, by Unit
2. Case totals, by Surgeon / Registrar
3. Inpatient stay totals, by MBS number
4. Mortality
5. Morbidity – totals
6. Morbidity - complete patient record
7. Transfers
8. Non-operative admissions
9. Registrar experience, totals
10. Registrar experience, by Surgeon

SURGbase have taken a collaborative approach to reporting over the past five years, utilizing the efforts of existing users to improve the available reports. Examples of specialty-specific reports include:

1. Anastomotic leak audits for colorectal surgery
2. Bile leak audits for biliary surgery
3. Major head and neck surgery audits, matching OHNS structure
4. Multi-site reports for surgical that encompass different hospitals

We are continually trying to improve the reporting engine, aware of our responsibility to keep it simple, while trying to facilitate the complexities of patient management. We are looking at incorporating 'system failures' into the reporting scheme in order to provide Hospitals an origin from which to evaluate critical incidents.