Audit and feedback can improve the care FPs provide

Audit and feedback (AF) is a cost-effective way to improve the quality of care provided by general practitioners and it does not require further research to prove this.That’s the contention of Dr. Jeremy Grimshaw, a Canadian pioneer in the field and senior scientist emeritus at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, who delivered the opening plenary address at the 10th International Audit and Feedback in Healthcare Conference. The virtual and in-person conference was presented jointly by the Audit and Feedback Metalab at the Women’s College Hospital Office of Spread and Scale and by the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.AF is defined by the Metalab group as a summary of any clinical performance of healthcare provided over a specified period of time in a written, electronic or verbal format that may include recommendations for clinical action.Read: Pat Rich: (Lots) more paperwork for Ont. docs due to proposed civil law changes?While AF has proven its value in high-income countries and with a primary care physician population, Dr. Grimshaw noted more research is needed to assess the value of translating this intervention to other settings and to low- and mid-income countries as well as other health care professions. He also acknowledged that while primary care physicians in Canada are facing increasing pressures and want to reduce their paperwork using AF can be much more successful “if it’s seen as an aid as opposed to just (being) a government Big Brother thing.”“I think we need both professional and probably government leadership to say ‘This is part and parcel of what your role is. This is what a good doctor does,’” he said, adding it should be viewed in the context of helping improve population health.Dr. Grimshaw’s address provided his personal journey in conducting some of the early research using AF, as well as dealing with some of the seminal research and commentaries that have advanced the field in the last two decades. His remarks at times echoed those of Dr. Noah Ivers, professor of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto and another leading AF researcher who provided opening remarks as co-chair of the conference.Dr. Ivers was co-author of a Cochrane review of 140 trials in 2012 that showed the effectiveness of AF as well as a follow-up analysis published earlier this year that assessed 292 trials. From the most recent Cochrane review, Dr. Ivers said “the bottom line (is) we can say that in general, audit and feedback works.”“We need to promote audit and feedback as a ready to go implementation science intervention,” said Dr. Grimshaw.Pat Rich is a Canadian health journalist and former editor of the Medical Post. This item originally appeared on his blog site.

Audit and feedback can improve the care FPs provide

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