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and clinical governance. Good data quality improves and supports gooddecision making at a national and a local level, as well as informingdecisions on patient care and planning.Audit Approach26 This inpatient audit was carried out by accredited clinical codingauditors who are NHS Connecting for Health (CFH) registered auditors.They are required to adhere to the latest version of the NHS CFH Code ofPractice for clinical coding auditors. The coding audits undertaken for theprogramme go beyond the CFH coding audit national methodology v3.1 inthe following respects:■ the use of benchmarking indicators to support the audit;■ grouping the data to HRGs and processing under PbR business rules togauge financial impact of data quality;■ calculating the value and impact on error rate of cases deemed "unsafeto audit"; and■ identification of best practice.27 This approach allows the accuracy of clinical coding to be assessed inthe targeted areas, and to support improvement in coding and associatedarrangements. There is no other toolkit/approach that provides this.28 We consulted with stakeholders in late 2009 on developing theprogramme. Based on this feedback we are moving to a more risk basedapproach focusing resources on the trusts still that need to improve themost. The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS FoundationTrust (the Trust) was selected for audit as the HRG error rates over threeyears places it in the worst performing 20 per cent of trusts.29 The Audit Commission reports to a lead PCT for each trust audit as thecommissioner of services and the acute provider as both haverecommendations that should be implemented. The lead PCT should sharethe findings from this audit with other PCTs who commission services fromthe Trust.Scope of the audit30 The audit was undertaken at The Royal Bournemouth and ChristchurchHospitals NHS Foundation Trust in December 2010. The audit covered 300Finished Consultant Episodes (FCEs), of which 200 were selected from anarea audited as a national theme or specialty in the previous three years.Audit Commission Payment by results data assurance framework 8