Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

There is a well-recognised and consistently identified gap between the care that patients should ideally receive and what is actually provided to them. Audit and Feedback (A&F), i.e. telling healthcare professionals how well they are providing care, is a commonly used strategy for helping to ensure that the care they provide is consistent with standards of high quality healthcare. A&F can often involve additional features, such as comparison to other professionals or to a standard performance level. Healthcare systems worldwide use A&F routinely in a variety of ways. A recent systematic review showed that there are over 140 randomised trials of A&F in healthcare settings. The review showed that A&F can improve care, but that not all A&F is created equal. Some examples of A&F trials show large improvements in care, whilst others show no change or even harmful change. There is a need to better understand what makes A&F work best and what features improve its effectiveness, such as: how should A&F look? Who delivers A&F? How frequently? To whom? And how does A&F work and in what context? The role that these factors have on the impact of A&F is not sufficiently considered in the routine use of A&F and thus there is real potential for healthcare systems to optimise how they are using this strategy. We have addressed this issue over the past five years in a number of CIHR-funded studies. As a result, we are in a position to be able to disseminate key findings regarding how to move forward in making best use of A&F to improve the care provided to Canadians. This one-day dissemination event will bring together key Canadian stakeholders currently using or planning to implement A&F in their healthcare settings to share the evidence to date. The event will highlight opportunities and ways of optimising the design and use of A&F and for evaluating A&F at scale.