OBJECTIVES This study measured the extent to which a systematic approach was used to select criteria for audit, and identified problems in using such an approach with potential solutions. DESIGN A questionnaire survey using the Audit Criteria Questionnaire (ACQ), created, piloted, and validated for the purpose. Possible ACQ scores ranged from 0 to 1, indicating how systematically the criteria...

We develop a method and algorithm for deciding the optimal approach to creating quality-auditing protocols for guideline-based clinical performance measures. An important element of the audit protocol design problem is deciding which guide-line elements to audit. Specifically, the problem is how and when to aggregate individual patient case-specific guideline elements into population-based qual...

OBJECTIVES To increase the frequency and quality of screening for the metabolic syndrome in people prescribed continuing antipsychotic medication. DESIGN An audit-based, quality improvement programme (QIP) with customised feedback to participating mental health services after each audit, including benchmarked data on their relative and absolute performance against an evidence-based practice s...

The conceptual framework of the marketing audit has been well developed by different contributors since the late 1950s. At the present time, the popular marketing textbooks and the published academic and general literature deal primarily with the theoretical and practical aspects of the marketing audit without offering any rigorous empirical justification of the practice. The teaching of the ma...

While concentration measures are a good indicator of market structure, the link with competitiveness is more complex than often assumed. In particular, the modern theory of industrial organisation makes no clear statement regarding the impact of concentration on competition – the focus of this paper is concentration and no inferences are made about competitive aspects of the market. The extent ...

BACKGROUND Effective maternal and perinatal audits are associated with improved quality of care and reduction of severe adverse outcome. Although audits at the level of care were formally introduced in Tanzania around 25 years ago, little information is available about their existence, performance, and practical barriers to their implementation. This study assessed the structure, process and im...

Different from traditional tax audit, supervision with self-audit is a combination of audit by the taxpayer himself and audit by the tax authority. This paper mainly studies a taxpayer’s optimal policy of tax evasion under supervision with self-audit and its related properties, in order to deduce some effective suggestions and theoretical bases to restrain tax evasion. Assuming that only a cert...

BACKGROUND We wished to determine the effect of a target-driven incentivised programme on haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c ) values in a UK diabetic population. METHODS An audit was carried out in 1999-2000, which included an estimation of glycaemic control in a randomly selected diabetic cohort from ten primary care practices in Sutton Coldfield, serving a population of 90 000 patients. Each practice ...

AIM To assess whether alcohol misuse was associated with functional impairment in the military, and whether an association between any of the measures of alcohol misuse and impairment would be explained by psychiatric comorbidity. DESIGN Large cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS 8585 responders of a random sample of the regular United Kingdom Armed Forces who completed a questionnaire in 20...

This study was aimed to present a model for social responsibility of audit firms using the grounded theory method. To this end, the components and dimensions of social responsibility model of audit firms were identified and explained. The research method was applied in terms of purpose, mixed (qualitative-quantitative)exploratoryin termsof datatype, anddescriptive-correlationalinterms of data c...