Last Update: 24/07/2014 15:56
The BreastSurgANZ Quality Audit (BQA) aims to improve the
quality of care by surgeons for patients with early and locally
advanced breast cancer in Australia and New Zealand.
Participants can self-assess their clinical performance against
set Key Performance Indicators and also compare certain data
against peers. Research into breast cancer treatment and
outcomes using de-identified audit data also forms an important
part of the audit's value.
Breast Surgeons of Australia and New Zealand (BreastSurgANZ), directors of the audit, require
Full members to submit data on all cases of early and
locally advanced breast cancer.
This audit was formerly directed by the Breast
Surgery Section of the College as the National Breast Cancer
Audit. It was originally initiated as a pilot study in 1998 and has
been running continuously since then.
The database currently contains over 150,000 episodes of breast
cancer, with over 300 surgeons contributing data each year from
across Australian and New Zealand.
Legal protection for collected data
The audit has been declared a Quality Assurance Activity under the
Commonwealth Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Confidentiality)
Amendment Act 1992 in Australia and has been declared a Protected Quality Assurance Activity under the
Health Practitioner's Competence Assurance Act 2003 in New Zealand.
The purpose of this legislation is to ensure that data that becomes
available as a result of the activity cannot be disclosed (in
reports or publications) in a manner that identifies a participant
Who can participate
Full members of BreastSurgANZ are automatically allocated an
audit account for collecting and submitting data.
Non-member access to the Online Portal for their own self-audit
purposes is also available for a fee; however, non-members are not
considered participants of the audit nor are they provided with the
other benefits and services of participation (beyond Help Desk
Benefits of participating
Use the BQA
Online Portal to:
- collect and store patient data
- produce summaries of individual breast cancer cases
- assess practice against key performance indicators
- benchmark against peers
- export cases to Microsoft Excel for further analyses
Other benefits include:
Contact the helpdesk at:
Telephone: +61 8 8219 0918
Fax: +61 8 8219 0999