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National Audit of Dementia (care in general hospitals)

Data Entry - submit audit data and questionnaire responses here

NAD-Chat - join our discussion group

Overview

In 2006 the Royal College of Psychiatrists was asked by the Healthcare Commission to look into priority areas for improvement of services for people with dementia. Following a literature review and 3 round consultation exercise, the report recommended an audit of the care of people with dementia in general hospitals. This was identified as a very high priority:

Admission to a general hospital ward is a time of high risk for people with dementia.
This can lead to worsening of the condition and poor outcomes in general.
There is a need for better consistency in standards of care on general hospital wards.

The audit is funded by the Department of Health and has been commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership.

All hospitals that provide general acute services in England and Wales are invited to participate in the core audit. This will evaluate the adequacy of structures and processes across the hospital that enable the provision of high quality care to people with dementia and will collate data from casenotes about admission, assessment and discharge.

Data collection from the core audit will begin in March 2010.

A limited number of hospitals will also participate in a more in-depth enhanced audit. This will evaluate the quality of person-centred care provided at ward level and the experience of patients and carers. Only hospitals that indicate a wish to participate have been considered for selection for the enhanced audit.

Please note: Places for the enhanced audit have now been allocated. If you are interested in taking part, we can put your details on our reservation list.

Data collection for the enhanced audit will begin in April 2010.

The audit programme will:

Apply clinical and organisation standards for the care of people with dementia in general hospital ward settings;
Train staff locally to ascertain the quality of care interactions using an observational or other structured feedback framework;
Produce reports for each participating ward, highlighting areas of achievement and areas for improvement;
Produce a national report which will allow wards to compare their activity and indicators of quality with all other participating wards;
Support local clinical and service improvement in line with the audit standards.

Please follow this link for more information on the audit structure.

Who can register?

The audit will be carried out in acute trusts and will be audited and reported at hospital level.

Eligible hospitals must...

provide acute inpatient services
admit patients over 65
have more than one ward
not be a specialist hospital
not be a community hospital

Why register?

Participation will help hospitals:

Identify good practice and areas for improvement in hospital wards.
Look at the experience of people with dementia and their carers.
Benchmark environmental and staffing factors against national picture of care provision.

Further information

Pilot

The pilot stage took place in 7 sites across England and Wales in autumn 2010. The pilot data received and feedback from pilot audit leads, led to changes to audit tools and standards and also to the timeline of the audit.

Observational Module

The observational tool is being piloted separately and is anticipated to take place in Spring 2010. Please complete the expressions of interest form if your organisation is interested in piloting the observation module of the National Audit of Dementia (care in general hospitals).

Newsletters

Audit Timeline

Core Audit	Start date	Deadline for data entry
Organisational Audit	15 March 2010	14 May 2010
Casenote Audit	22 March 2010	16 July 2010

Enhanced Audit	Start date	Deadline for data entry
Environmental Audit	1 April 2010	11 June 2010
Ward Organisational Audit	1 April2010	28 May 2010
Carer/Patient Questionnaire	1 April 2010	13 August 2010
Staff Questionnaire	1 April 2010	16 July 2010
Observation training	From October 2010	N/A

Registering for audit

So far, 95% of trusts across England and Wales have registered for the audit.

If you have eligible hospitals in your trust that have not yet registered for the core audit, it is not too late! Please download this information sheet, complete the registration form and return to the project team.

Support and organisation of the audit

The audit is managed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Centre for Quality Improvement, working in close partnership with professional and service user representatives.

The collaborators in this project are the professional bodies for five of the main disciplines involved in providing dementia services, and one of the main voluntary sector providers of supports and services:

Additionally, Professor Martin Orrell, Professor of Ageing and Mental Health at University College London (UCL) and North East London Mental Health Trust (NELMHT), and Professor John Young, Head of the Academic Unit of Elderly Care & Rehabilitation at Leeds University and Consultant Geriatrician in Bradford (LU-ECRU), are expert advisors to the programme.