Conclusion 16

Clinical negligence litigation stands in stark contrast to best practice in terms of patient safety. Gains are made by careful system-wide analysis rather than the search for individual blame. The creation of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body as a statutory body which will undertake no-blame safe space investigations maps out the direction of travel for reducing harm and improving patient safety. Maintaining a costly and adversarial litigation system is evermore at odds with our 58 NHS litigation reform understanding of how the NHS should respond to failures in care. The administrative body’s investigative process would generate a rich, more usable source of data which could be returned to the NHS to improve patient care.