Internal audits play a key role in maintaining service quality. For providers committed to ensuring the safety and quality of the services they deliver, the internal audit process is a useful tool to assess each aspect of the organisation and its service delivery, and identify areas where improvements can be made.
Why internal audits?
Many service sectors now enforce a positive obligation on providers to ensure the safety and quality of their services through continuous quality improvement. Internal audits can form one part of the continuous quality improvement process, helping providers to identify both areas of strength and areas where improvements can be made.
Effective internal audits also work hand-in-hand with organisational risk management, as they can help providers to identify and manage risks across different areas of their organisation.
From different angles
Effective internal audits evaluate aspects of a provider’s processes and service delivery from a range of perspectives, measuring the extent to which the intended outcomes are experienced by different groups within the organisation.
This approach considers not only the provider’s processes and procedures, but also how those processes and procedures are working in practice. A provider might have extensive and comprehensive policies and procedures, however an internal audit might reveal that the intended effects of the procedures are not flowing on to the service user experience.
When completing an internal audit, it’s therefore key to engage service users, workers, senior managers and other relevant stakeholders to gain insight from their direct experience. This can help a provider to understand whether their systems are working effectively, with the intended service delivery outcomes.
Audit outcomes in practice
Both the evidence gathered for an internal audit and the results of the audit itself can be used as evidence for other compliance assessments, including external audits and monitoring.
Providers who complete internal audits regularly ensure that they have up-to-date data on:
- how their operations are functioning,
- feedback from workers on whether they understand processes and are appropriately trained, and
- how their services users feel about the services delivered.
It also means it’s easier for them to collate current evidence that can be used when it’s needed in an audit. By completing internal audits regularly, there’s also a clear record of commitment to continuous quality improvement.
Completing audits internally also allows workers, service users, and the governing body to familiarise themselves with audit processes, so they’re prepared and know what to expect for any external audits that occur.
Internal audits in aged care
For aged care providers specifically, conducting internal audits on a regular basis helps to fulfil the continuous quality improvement obligations under Standard 2 of the Aged Care Quality Standards.
We’ve created a series of self-assessments for aged care providers to conduct internal audits on their organisation, aligning with each of the seven Aged Care Quality Standards. This allows providers to complete an in-depth internal audit for each Standard they’re required to complete.
Some handy features of our internal audit self-assessments are:
- Audit questions covering three core perspectives – Governance, Workers and Service Users;
- Space for evidence and auditor observations for each question;
- Space for organisations to add tailored additional questions if necessary; and
- A rating system for each module aligned with the Commission’s compliance scale.
More to come!
With the importance of internal audits to the service sector, we’ll be continuing to develop tools and resources in this space for providers in a range of service areas, so keep an eye out!
If you have any suggestions or requests for internal audits, please reach out to let us know – we’d love to hear from providers on ways we can best help their processes.
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