Inclusion criteria and exceptions
The two Rhazes audit fields that decide which records count, why they are separate, and how each one changes your compliance figure.
Updated
Two different questions
They look similar and they are not, and getting them the wrong way round is the commonest way an audit produces a number you cannot defend.
- Inclusion criteria ask whether this record should be judged at all.
- Exceptions ask whether this record had a legitimate clinical reason not to comply.
Inclusion criteria
Who is in scope. All patients admitted to the cardiology ward between January and March 2024.
Rhazes only audits records that meet these criteria. Anything that does not is marked excluded and leaves the calculation entirely.
Excluded is not a failure. A paediatric record in an adult audit is not non-compliance, and counting it as one would understate your performance and make the whole audit useless.
Write these tightly. Loose inclusion criteria pull in records that were never meant to be judged, and every one of them lands in your denominator.
Exceptions
Valid clinical reasons for non-compliance. Patient refused measurement, or equipment malfunction documented.
A record that meets the inclusion criteria but has a documented exception is marked exception, and it also leaves the calculation.
This is what makes an audit fair. A patient who declined a measurement is not evidence that your service failed to offer it, and a standard with no exceptions defined will record every one of those as a failure.
Why both leave the denominator
Because compliance is only meaningful across the records where compliance was genuinely possible. See How Rhazes calculates compliance.
Getting them right
- If a record should never have been looked at, that is inclusion criteria.
- If a record was rightly looked at but could not comply, that is an exception.
- If you are unsure, ask whether a reviewer would expect to see the record in the audit at all. If yes, it belongs in scope, and the reason it did not comply is an exception.
Exceptions are optional, and usually worth writing
The field can be left blank, and for a standard with no legitimate reason to fail, it should be. For everything else, the exceptions you leave undefined come back as failures you then have to explain one by one.