"Medical audit of rectal biopsy diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease" is not medical audit.

"Medical audit of rectal biopsy diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease" is not medical audit.

Medical audit of rectal biopsy diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease.

The records of the rectal biopsy diagnoses of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease in the Department of Pathology, St Mark's Hospital, London, were reviewed. The biopsy diagnoses were compared to subsequent resection diagnoses on the same patients, and annual and seasonal variations in the frequency of these and related diagnoses were studied. The accuracy rate for the biopsy diagnosis of ulc...

Medical audit data: counting is not enough.

OBJECTIVE To assess the meaningfulness of a year's worth of audit data relating to all the inpatients of one consultant general surgeon and to question the usefulness of certain outcome measures. DESIGN Analysis of records entered on to audit computer (Dunnfile) and relating to inpatient episodes for one consultant general surgeon over one year. Data obtained were compared with ward records a...

Evaluation of medical audit.

OBJECTIVE To review current knowledge of the effectiveness of medical audit programmes as a whole and of specific interventions within these programmes, as a means of changing clinical behaviour. CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION OF PUBLISHED REPORTS: Articles listed on Medline from 1985-92 with key words "quality assurance" or "medical audit", and "evaluation" and relevant references from t...

Rethinking medical audit: the goal is efficiency.

Last year in this journal Hopkins' reviewed the various approaches to "medical audit", and looked at how such audit is likely to develop over the next few years. The essence of his article seems to be that medical audit, if successful, should improve the quality of care. However, Hopkins can provide no evidence that any of the three approaches to medical audit which he outlines achieves this ob...