Clinical audit

Considerable effort is made to ensure that the data for each scan is accurately recorded in a standardised format to support the clinical governance agenda and allow the submission of bespoke 'Quality Accounts' whenever required.

The quality of data acquired has enabled effective benchmarking of performance to be undertaken.

Echotech actively supports the service evaluation and review process, based on a set of Key Performance Indicators (Clinical and Operational).

Approximately one third of ALL studies are reviewed for audit purposes and graded into one of five categories, as below:

Category 5: No disagreement

Category 4: Disagreement over style and / or presentation of the report

Category 3: Failure to describe clinically insignificant echo feature

Category 2: Definite omission of significant echo feature but unlikely to result in serious morbidity and mortality

Category 1: Definite omission or misinterpretation of significant echo feature with potential for serious morbidity and mortality

For each patient scanned by Echotech, the critical data (clinical and non clinical) is added weekly to a central data base (EchoNet).

All stakeholders have access to the data base. Part of this process includes the submission of a weekly 'patient tracker' spreadsheet which details the data columns 1 to 32 shown below. This will allow the commissioning organisation to fully audit / evaluate the service for waiting times and activity analysis.

1. Patient surname
2. Patient first name
3. Patient age
4. Patient date of birth
5. Patient gender
6. Patient ID
7. Referrer title
8. Referrer initial
9. Referrer surname
10. Referrer address (first line)
11. Referrer organisation
12. Reason for echo
13. iCardiogram code (Image Reference)
14. Referral date
15. Echo date
16. Echo waiting time
17. Echo wait target met (yes < 4 weeks or no > 4 weeks)
18. Echo venue
19. Echo conclusion
20. Ejection Fraction
21. LV systolic function (normal, mild, moderate or severe)
22. LV diastolic dysfunction (yes or no)
23. Significant valve disease (yes or no)
24. RV dysfunction (yes or no)
25. Patient in AF (yes or no)
26. Technical quality (good, fair or poor)
27. Cardiac Physiologist name
28. Cardiology referral comments (if applicable)
29. Peer review comments (if applicable)
30. Review category (5,4,3,2 or 1)
31. Suggested cardiology referral (yes or no)
32. Urgent action required (yes or no)

Echotech attends all performance review meetings and will respond effectively to any service redesign requirements.