Note: this Guide uses the NSOC category as an example, however, the same process applies to all audit categories
1. Audit Area Question vs Element Report
The purpose of this report is to give an average score for each element considered individually. This makes it possible to quickly identify elements that are failing a lot, and to see at a glance the Functional Areas where they are failing most heavily.
As with all the Reports, the date range (A) is a key factor. By default, the report runs with a date range of one month, as in the example above; however, you can choose a different range if you wish.
In this report, all the scores shown are averages. The date range is used to decide which audits these average scores are calculated from.
We can easily see that the score for each element as a whole is an average, because the row label tells us so: Q/E Average Score % (B). But we should bear in mind that each element’s score in the other rows (the rows for each Functional area) is, in principle, an average too. In the case of element 12 (C), we can see that this element scored 100% on Arthur Ward and 80% on Wellington Ward. But what if Arthur Ward or Wellington Ward were audited more than once within the date range of the report? Then these scores will be averages.
The longer the date range, the more likely it is that areas will have been audited more than once within that date range, and the more likely it is that the scores shown will be averages.
2. Audit Bi-Monthly Report
The Bi-Monthly Report enables easy comparisons between any two months. By default, it will show you all the completed audits from the current month to date, alongside the whole of the previous month. You can choose an earlier date as the end point of the date range, but the starting point will always be the beginning of the month before that.
This enables you to quickly identify areas that have not yet been audited this month, as well as compare scores for areas that have been.
3. Audit Compliance Report
This report enables you to see at a glance which Functional Areas and Responsibility Groups have met their target score (scores are highlighted green) or fallen below it (scores are highlighted red). For NSOC audits, it also shows the Star Ratings.
Average scores are shown for each Functional Area, and the report tells you how many audits these averages are taken from (e.g. A). Each Functional area also has an expand button (B), which will open up the details of the individual audits. The expand button has been clicked for Arthur Ward (C). This has resulted in the columns marked D, showing the details of the individual audits, being filled in for Arthur Ward.
Note that the average scores are still visible too. E shows the averages for Arthur Ward, and F for the whole building. In the case of Star Ratings, this can result in the number shown not being a whole number. This has happened in the case of the building called Altrincham House, and the Functional Area called Gloucester Ward, both of which have an average Star Rating of 4.5 (G). Individual audits will only ever have a Star Rating that is a whole number, but the average may not be.
Audits that have a null score (i.e., audits that have closed without any results being entered) show as a dash (-) with a red highlight. This has happened in the case of three out of the five Arthur Ward audits. Only scores that meet the target for the area are shown in green. However, null scores are not included in the average scores shown.
The individual audit ID numbers (H) are links; when you click on one, the Score Sheet for that audit will open.
When you run this report in the NSOC category, one of the parameters you can set is a Star Rating parameter. This gives you the option to filter the report so that it only shows audits with a specified star rating. It also gives you the option to show all audits with three stars or less:
This aids compliance with the NHS England requirement that all such areas should be subject to automatic review (pp. 34-36 here: B0271-national-standards-of-healthcare-cleanliness-2021.pdf (england.nhs.uk)).
4. Audit Failures Report and Audit Failures Report (P)
This report gives you a feel for the failures that are being recorded, and the progress that is being made in actioning them. The only difference between the two versions is that the ‘(P)’ version includes photos, in thumbnail form, on the right. There is room for up to six photos per recorded failure. The photos can be viewed in a larger form by clicking on them.
The report includes two sign-off boxes, in the columns headed ‘Contractor/Operative’ and ‘Client/Supervisor’. This means that it can be printed off and used as a live record if you wish.
At the same time, it will also show you where Actions have been marked as complete within the software. This information is found in the column headed ‘Date fix done’. In the example above, this column shows a mix of dates and blanks. This is because the report has been run with the Action status filter set to ‘All actions’:
The default setting is ‘Incomplete actions’; when this is selected, the ‘Date fix done’ column will be empty, because the report will only show those failures that have not been rectified. Conversely, if you select ‘Completed actions’, all cells in the ‘Date fix done’ column will be filled in, because the report will only show those failures that have been rectified.
5. Audit Review (monthly) and Audit Review (weekly)
These two reports work in exactly the same way, except that the monthly version has months as columns while the weekly version has weeks. So it may be useful to filter by risk level when running the report. For instance, for NSOC reports, we could use the weekly version for FR1 areas and the monthly version for FR2 areas:
Through the red and green highlights, the report enables you to see trends in the scores for each Functional Area over a period of time. As with the Audit Compliance report, scores shown are averages until the expand buttons are used. In this example, the expand button has been clicked for Rudolph Ward:
Once an expand button has been clicked, the individual audit scores become visible, and these are links; if you click on one, the Score Sheet for that audit will open.
6. Cancelled Audits Report
As the name suggests, this report provides a record of audits that have been cancelled, together with the reasons. In the example below, notice that the date range is applied to the date the audit was cancelled, not the date it was created. It was created on a date which falls outside the date range of the report, but the report includes it because its cancellation date falls within the range:
7. Element Failure Rate Report
This report lists elements by their failure rate. At the top of the report come those elements with the highest failure rates, moving down to those with the lowest failure rates at the bottom. Elements which have not been failed at all within the report’s parameters, do not appear in the report.
It is important to understand how the failure rate is measured. It is not measured by the raw number of fails, but by the percentage of fails out of all the times the element was audited. This is shown in the column on the right, headed ‘Original % Passed’:
On this page, all the elements except the last one have 0 in the ‘Original % Passed’ column, meaning that they passed 0% of the time (within the report’s parameters) – in other words, they never passed at all. On the other hand, we should also note that they weren’t audited very often, as the ‘Count Audited’ column reveals. Among the elements with a 0% pass rate, element 17 tops the list because it was audited 3 times, meaning it has more fails than the next three elements, which are tied on 2 fails each. (Because they are tied, these three are simply listed in order of their names, with element 04 followed by element 20 and then 25.) The page ends with an element that has a 50% pass rate; it was audited twice and passed once.
The raw numbers in the ‘Count Audited’ and ‘Original Count Passed’ columns can be just as important as the pass rate in the ‘Original % Passed’ column. Suppose you looked at the next page of the report and found that toilets had a pass rate of 70%, because they had been audited 100 times and passed 70 of those times. This is a higher pass rate than any of the elements above. However, it would also mean that toilets had failed 30 times, which is a lot more fails, in terms of raw numbers, than any of the elements above. You wouldn’t regard that as unimportant just because the element had a higher pass rate.
8. Functional Area Averages Report
As the name suggests, this report simply gives you averages for everything. Unlike the Audit Review reports, which give you averages for each week or each month, this report shows the average for the entire date range of the report, however long or short that may be. In this way, you can see what scores your Functional areas are averaging over whatever period you choose. In the NSOC category, the average Star Ratings are shown too.
This report is like a simplified version of the Audit Compliance report, in that you cannot expand the Functional Areas to see the individual audit details.
9. List of Audits Report
This simply lists the audits that have taken place by Region and Site. The audit ID numbers are links to the Score Sheets for each audit, as in the Audit Compliance report.
10. Monitors/Auditors Report
This lists the audits carried out by each Team, with brief details for each audit including the time spent on it. Once again, the audit ID numbers provide a link to the Score Sheet for each audit.
11. Room/Risk Count Report
This report helps you to see the coverage your audits are achieving for each risk level. In the example below, we can see that only a minority of the rooms at each risk level have been audited within the date range of the report:
Notice, too, the difference between the ‘Rooms Audited’ column and the ‘Distinct Rooms Audited’ column for the FR1 risk level. The ‘Rooms Audited’ column tells us that there were 14 occasions (within the report’s parameters) when an FR1 room was audited. However, at the same time, the ‘Distinct Rooms Audited’ column tells us that only 12 distinct FR1 rooms were audited. In other words, out of the 12 distinct rooms audited, either two of them were audited twice, or one of them was audited three times, giving us the total of 14 occasions.
If there is a big difference between your ‘Rooms Audited’ and your ‘Distinct Rooms Audited’, this tells you that many of the same rooms are being audited repeatedly.
12. Room Audit Frequency Report
Like the Room/Risk Count report, this report helps you to get a broad picture of the coverage you are achieving, but this time by room instead of by risk level.
Rooms are listed by Building, with the Region and Site also named (A).
It is important to note that rooms are only listed if the Functional Area they are in was audited within the date range of the report. This is why every room listed has a Latest Audit Date (B). Each room’s Latest Audit Date is the most recent date, within the date range of the report, when an audit was closed on that room’s Functional Area. It does not mean that the room itself was necessarily audited. That is why some rooms have a 0 in the Audits column; this means that the Functional Area was audited, but that specific room was not. In this way, you can get a quick feel for how many rooms your audits are covering or not covering.
If a room’s Functional Area did not have an audit that was closed within the date range of the report, that room will not appear in the report at all.
If a room is listed more than once (C is an example), it means that it belongs to more than one Functional Area, and is listed once for each area it belongs to.
Where a room was audited, and so has a number higher than 0 in the Audits column (D), that number serves as a link. When you click it, a secondary report opens giving brief details of the audits that have taken place on the Functional Area in question. Within this secondary report, the audit ID numbers serve as a link to the Score Sheets: