January 2012 - Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals

SWBAC (12/11) 068
6 Governance matters
6.1 Self‐assessment of the Audit Committee’s effectiveness
SWBAC (12/11) 055
SWBAC (12/11) 055 (a)
Mr White presented the list of questions from the Audit Committee
Handbook that would be used to undertake an assessment of the
effectiveness of the Audit Committee. The Committee’s attention was
drawn to the changes to the questions given the recent revisions to the
Handbook.
The Committee was advised that the self‐assessment would be completed
by a subset of the Audit Committee prior to the next meeting and would be
presented for comments at the meeting scheduled for 9 February 2012.
ACTION:
Mr Grainger‐Payne to convene a subset of the Audit
Committee to prepare an initial self‐assessment of the
Audit Committee’s effectiveness
6.2 Response to the letter from the Chair of NHS West Midlands: Data
Quality Assurance
SWBAC (12/11) 067
SWBAC (12/11) 067 (a)
SWBAC (12/11) 067 (b)
Mr White reminded the Committee that a letter had been received from
the Chair of NHS West Midlands seeking assurances that the Trust was
considering its responsibilities in respect of data quality. He advised that
the key consideration concerned the integrity of the information that was
used to inform the performance against the NHS Performance Framework
and the associated governance rating. As such, the Committee was
informed that work had been undertaken to develop criteria that enable
the various pieces of information to be ranked according to risk and to
provide an indication as to whether the data was of good quality.
Mrs Hunjan reported that Mr Trotman had questioned how the integrity of
the data was maintained at all points in a system. Mr White advised that
the matter concerned not only assurances on the quality of the data itself
but also on the process by which it is generated. Mr Gayle agreed that a
sound process was critical to guaranteeing the integrity of data.
Mrs Hunjan encouraged greater attention to be given to reviewing the data
quality of those pieces of information seen to be highest risk.
Mr Capener remarked that he was encouraged by the work and in
particular the plan to assess the risks around the various data workstreams.
Professor Alderson noted that the data sources were all internal, apart
from Dr Foster and highlighted that there was little control that the Trust
could be expected to have over the integrity of data from external sources.
It was agreed that a further update on the plans to review data quality
should be considered at the next meeting.
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