Medical Audit

by Anjan Prakash

Quality of medical care denotes the degree of excellence of the care delivered. Evaluation of quality of care involves two basic concepts, firstly the quality of technical care i.e. adequacy of structure and procedure including diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and secondly the quality of the art of care, relating to the manner in which the care is provided and perceived by the consumers. Quality of medical care can be assessed to a large extent by the analysis of medical records and this is what is meant by Medical Audit. Medical Audit is a very important regulatory mechanism which aims to raise the quality of medical care through an in-built system of peer review of professional work of the hospital by an in house committee of the medical staff. Medical Audit also helps in stream­lining the procedures related to the provision of medical care by pinpointing the bottlenecks in diagnostic, therapeutic and other suppor­tive services of the hospital. In brief, medical audit is bene­ficial for the patient, the medical staff and the hospital adminis­tration. In this book, an attempt has been made to provide compre­hensive information about the complex issue of medical audit which would be educational for the medical staff and beneficial for the patients. It is sincerely hoped that medical audit will not only be useful but will prove to be a milestone in improving the quality of medical care services, provided, it is implemented in its true spirit.

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