Observations from Australia's National Surgical Mortality Audit.

Background: Australia is the only country with a national surgical mortality audit. Every Australian surgical mortality is independently and externally reviewed by another surgeon. Extensive educational feedback to surgeons and hospitals is provided through individual patient reviews, state and national symposia and reports, and the distribution of deidentified informative cases.

Concordance between independent first-line assessors in the Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality.

Background: The Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality independently reviews deaths under a surgeon. A surgical case form completed by the surgeon is reviewed by a first-line assessor, who in 15% of cases recommends a detailed case note review. The aim of this study was to assess concordance between the original first-line assessment (FLA1) and an additional first-line assessment (FLA2) in relation to the necessity for a second-line assessment (SLA) and recognition of clinical management issues.

The Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality: outcomes from the first 10 years.

The Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality (WAASM) is an external, peer-reviewed audit of all deaths that occur in hospital of patients under the care of a surgeon. We conducted a retrospective analysis of prospective audit data collected from 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2011. The annual number of deaths peaked in 2006, then fell 22% by 2011.