Designing and implementing an Australian and New Zealand intensive care data audit study

The aim of this pilot audit study is to develop and test a model to examine existing adult patient database (APD) data quality.

A database was created to audit 50 records per site to determine accuracy. The audited records were randomly selected from the calendar year 2004 and four sites participated in the pilot audit study. A total of 41 data elements were assessed for data quality – those elements required for APACHE II scoring system.

Results showed that the audit was feasible; missing audit data were an unplanned problem; analysis was complicated owing to the way the APACHE calculations are performed and 50 records per site was too time‐consuming.

This is the first audit study of intensive care data within the ANZICS APD and demonstrates how to determine data quality in a large database containing individual patient records.