Anna Królak, Patrycja Kurowska

Audit - types and role in repair processes of medical entities
2021-03-26

Audit - types and role in repair processes of medical entities

Quality and safety issues are becoming increasingly important in hospital care, as they directly affect both clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. A widely used tool for quality improvement in hospitals is an audit. In hospitals, external, internal, and clinical audits are led. Although there are differences between them, in terms of scope and approach, they all serve one purpose: improving the quality of medical services in hospital care. Examples of the recovery role of audits led in inpatient healthcare facilities were presented in the article. Barriers against introducing recovery programs, which often derive from necessity of introducing audit recommendations and optimization of internal processes, were also pointed out. Changing circumstances of leading audits in the reality of crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic were taken into consideration. Changes happening in health care are creating the need to introduce recovery plans going outside the health facilities and involving the whole health care system.

There is a lack of deeper research on the effectiveness of internal audits in inpatient facilities. There is a need to create a platform for exchanging experiences from different hospitals and tested out, developed recommendations on introducing recovery plans have to go outside particular facilities and should include the whole healthcare system.

It would be reasonable if, prior to creating regulations on the operation of hospitals, national audits of these institutions were carried out to assess to what extent the new legal requirements could be met. Otherwise, many facilities assess the demands made by the Ministry of Health as unrealistic to meet, which creates unfavorable conditions for the implementation of recovery plans.

Works dedicated to clinical audits functioning involve a wide range of topics, however, scientific evidence does not indicate the realistic and clear effectiveness of such audits. It is, therefore, necessary to validate clinical audits in different operational contexts.

Keywords: internal audit, external audit, managing a medical entity, repair plan.

© Farm Pol, 2021, 77(2): 71–78