The SPQR study

Safety for Patients through Quality Review.

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Study aims

We aim to determine how Medical Examiner (ME) assessment of death certification and retrospective cases record review (RCRR) can best work together to identify potentially avoidable deaths due to shortcomings in care. We also aim to use the ME assessments and RCRR recorded in this study to identify features or patterns related to problems in care that might be addressed to improve quality of care.

Objective

Estimate the sensitivity and specificity of ME assessment for identifying potentially avoidable deaths compared to a reference standard of RCRR and determine whether the ‘miss rate’ of ME assessment (the proportion of potentially avoidable deaths among cases screened out by ME assessment or 1 minus the negative predictive value) is low enough to allow ME assessment to be used to ‘pre-screen’ deaths for RCRR.
Examine discordant judgements between ME assessment and RCRR (i.e. potentially avoidable deaths missed by either ME assessment or RCRR) to determine how ME assessment and RCRR might be improved and how they could work alongside each other to identify problems in care and potentially avoidable deaths.
Identify themes in the problems in care revealed by ME assessment and RCRR, such as the nature of harms and the patients or processes involved, thus providing insights to improve quality of care.
Increase understanding of the ME role in identifying potentially avoidable deaths, particularly through interaction with relatives, and explore how the role can be developed to maximise learning opportunities alongside RCRR.
Explore the impact of implementing systems combining ME assessment and RCRR.