Participating organisations are encouraged to undertake a retrospective audit (Base Review) of the routine documentation of care given to dying patients in their organisation. The main purpose of this exercise is to highlight and reinforce the need for change.

The base review involves organisations identifying a set of 20 recent consecutive notes from within the proposed pilot area. The information contained within the notes is then scrutinised for evidence that appropriate care has been delivered in the dying phase against the goals of care identified on the LCP. A set of guidance notes are available from the LCP central team to assist organisations in systematically coding the information onto scannable proformas. Patient demographic information regarding primary diagnosis, gender and age is also collected. The information is then returned to the LCP Central Team who analyse the data descriptively and report back the results to participants within 4/6 weeks. In the main, the feedback consists of simple charts that illustrate, at a glance, where the documentation of care is good and where it might be improved.