The 2025 PSS review requires clinical audits. Your PMS has the data. Nobody has the time to extract it.
Clinical audit is now an explicit requirement of the RCVS PSS at General Practice level following the 2025 five-year review. Practices must demonstrate they regularly review clinical outcomes and use the findings to improve care. In theory, your PMS contains the data: antibiotic prescribing rates, surgical complication rates, anaesthetic mortality, vaccination compliance, dental procedure outcomes. In practice, extracting this data, analysing it meaningfully, and turning it into improvement actions requires time that clinical staff don't have. Your agent runs regular clinical audits from your PMS data, producing structured reports that demonstrate the continuous improvement cycle the PSS now requires.
What Your Agent Actually Does
Your agent runs clinical audits directly from your PMS data — producing structured reports that demonstrate the continuous improvement cycle the 2025 PSS review requires.
Runs standard audit topics from PMS data
Antibiotic prescribing patterns (relevant to AMR stewardship), surgical complication rates, anaesthetic monitoring compliance, vaccination coverage, perioperative mortality — your agent extracts and analyses data for the audit topics most relevant to your practice and most expected by PSS assessors.
Benchmarks against published norms
Is your anaesthetic mortality rate within published ranges? Are your antibiotic prescribing patterns aligned with RCVS guidance on responsible use? Your agent benchmarks your data against available published norms, giving context to the numbers rather than presenting them in isolation.
Identifies trends and outliers
Complication rate rising over the last quarter? One clinician's prescribing patterns significantly different from the team average? Post-operative infection rate higher for certain procedure types? Your agent identifies trends that warrant investigation, not just static snapshots.
Generates audit reports with improvement recommendations
Each audit produces a structured report: what was measured, what was found, how it compares to benchmarks, what actions are recommended. The audit cycle — measure, compare, change, re-measure — is documented for PSS evidence.
Tracks audit actions to completion
New antibiotic prescribing protocol agreed? Pre-anaesthetic blood work now mandatory for patients over 8? Your agent tracks whether audit-driven changes are actually implemented — closing the audit loop that PSS assessors expect to see.
The real numbers.
| Vet time extracting and analysing PMS data for audits | £2,000–£4,000/year |
| Clinical governance lead time (if allocated) | £1,000–£2,000/year |
| PSS non-compliance risk for missing audits | Variable (accreditation at risk) |
| Realistic annual cost | £3,000–£5,000 |
| Agent build (one-off, configured to your PMS and audit topics) | £2,500–£4,000 |
| Monthly running costs (hosting + AI usage) | £80–£150/month |
| Audit topic and benchmark updates | Included in first year |
| Realistic first-year total | £3,460–£5,800 |
Clinical audit has always been good practice — but it's now a PSS requirement, and 'we don't have time' is not an answer the RCVS assessor will accept. The irony is that your PMS already contains the data; the bottleneck is extracting and analysing it.
Your agent removes the bottleneck. Audits run quarterly, reports are generated automatically, and the continuous improvement cycle the PSS requires is documented without adding hours to anyone's week.
Good fit / not a fit.
This works brilliantly for:
- Practices with PSS accreditation approaching reassessment
- Practices that know they should audit but never find the time
- Clinical directors who want data-driven governance rather than anecdote-driven
- Multi-vet practices where clinical variation between vets needs visibility
This probably isn't for you if:
- You already run regular clinical audits with a robust process
- Your PMS doesn't contain structured clinical data (paper records only)
- You're a single-vet practice with low patient volume
Let's talk.
We'll start with your PMS, what clinical data it captures, and whether you've attempted clinical audits before. Usually a 15-minute conversation.
hello@nimblecroft.com