Hospital Mortality Audit and Clinical Review Using REDCap: Internal Medicine Department – March 2025

This project involved designing and deploying a REDCap-based mortality audit tool to collect and analyze structured clinical data for all patients who died within the Internal Medicine Department at a tertiary hospital in March 2025. The audit was part of a hospital-wide quality improvement initiative aimed at identifying preventable deaths, delays in clinical care, and patterns in acute deterioration.

Project Objectives:

To document and analyze demographic, admission, and clinical intervention data for all in-hospital deaths

To identify delays in medical reviews and the impact of early vs late intervention

To classify the causes of death and assess preventability

To use standardized REDCap data collection for future comparability and audit cycles

Tool Used:

REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) – designed a structured data entry form with 30 fields, including branching logic, datetime formatting, and validation rules

Key Data Components Collected:

Patient Identification & Admission Data

IP numbers, ward/bed assignments, age, sex

Admission source (e.g., emergency, referral)

Admission date and time

Ward Assignment & Clinical Management

Primary ward and attending consultant

Initial and final medical review timestamps

Any delays in medical review, with qualitative justification

Vital Signs and Clinical Indicators

Blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation

Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), random blood sugar levels

Critical Interventions & Transfers

Date/time of major events (e.g., CPR, intubation)

ICU/HDU transfers and dates (if applicable)

Outcome Documentation

Final status at discharge (Recovered, Transferred, Deceased)

Cause of death

Whether the death was deemed preventable

Whether a family meeting was held

Highlights of Data Quality and Audit Design:

Branching Logic: Certain fields (e.g., ICU transfer date, delay reasons) only appear conditionally

Validation Controls: Numeric and datetime validations to improve data integrity

User Roles: Designed for research assistants and clinicians with appropriate REDCap access

Ethical Considerations: Data structured for retrospective analysis with built-in confidentiality safeguards

Outcome and Insights:

Built a replicable, audit-ready REDCap form enabling structured mortality audits across departments

Supported downstream statistical analysis (e.g., preventability rates, delay impact, clinical response timelines)

Enabled hospital leadership to review avoidable mortality and initiate service improvements

Prepared the dataset for linkage with future clinical dashboards or mortality review panels

This project reflects hands-on experience with clinical audit design, REDCap implementation, and hospital data governance. It demonstrates your ability to translate clinical workflows into structured digital audits, enabling data-driven quality improvement in hospital medicine.