What is the difference between a clinical audit and a patient outcome programme?

Sometimes agreed good practice criteria do not exist, perhaps because it is difficult ethically to conduct properly controlled scientific trials for a particular aspect of patient care. In some areas of healthcare - often in relation to complex surgery - it is more direct and important to measure outcomes following treatment.

In these circumstances, recording the results for individual patients (their outcomes) can supplement or replace an audit of what has been done to them.

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