The Australasian College of Surgeons regard surgical audit as a comparison against recognised standards of current surgical practice in order to improve the quality of care to patients. Data is collected with defined criteria. Comparisons are undertaken and recommendations for change made and followed up.

The key to surgical audit is to pose sensible questions, and to collate information from a variety of sources to deliver an answer.

Examples of good questions include:

• What is the stroke rate among patients undergoing carotid surgery in our institution?
• What is the bile leak rate in our Unit?
• What is the wound infection rate in all patients having ‘clean’ surgery?
• What has happened to all of our bowel resections over the past 12 months?
• How many of our patients had an unplanned returned to theatre < 28 days?
• Are our Registrars getting enough operative experience?

SURGbase have been performing surgical audit in Australian hospitals for many years, and have refined our techniques for delivering comprehensive answers to sensible, clinically relevant questions.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons provides a great resource for those interested in reviewing the requirements of surgical audit. See Surgical Audit and peer review, 2008.

The Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality (WAASM) is a peer review process to independently review deaths in surgical patients in Western Australia. See the Annual Report, 2008

RACS have used this model to develop similar mortality audits in other states. SURGbase Enterprise can be used as a template for entering data into these state-based audits (see below)

 

SURGbase Enterprise is our latest software development. We have designed this software to cater for ANY Surgeon or Registrar, of ANY specialty, including General Surgery, Orthopaedic Surgery, Paediatric Surgery, and Gynaecological Surgery. Our reports are a mixture of generic audits and tailored audits to suit individual specialties.

The capture of data is ‘live’, entered by users at the time of operative intervention, complication, or discharge. An alternative model involves the use of "data-entry" personnel and paper-based auditing by doctors. We have a proven track record at multi-site hospital networks, running enterprise-wise solutions. Our software can be used by any specialty, at any hospital in Australia.

SURGbase collects the expanded RACS dataset, and additional fields relevant to particular specialties. Our software was designed by a doctor, and implemented with a view to being very easy to use. SURGbase have a team of IT staff who ensure that our databases use current technology and are regularly maintained, updated, and serviced.

SURGbase are committed to delivering audit solutions for the long-term. Our aim is to integrate with the various Australian surgical colleges, minimizing duplication of specialty-specific datasets within individual enterprises.