Cross-Administration Patient Safety Coordination

This recommendation is accepted in full by the UK Government, the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. We acknowledge that patient safety incidents in healthcare are a source of learning and patient safety priorities. Intuitive patient safety incident reporting and learning systems, which capture and provide structured learning, are key to improving patient safety and preventing the occurrence of harm. The NHS in England is world-leading in this regard, having operated a single national database of all recorded patient safety incidents since 2004. This database was recently overhauled and updated. Called the Learn From Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, it collates and supports the analysis of around 3 million patient safety incidents a year, most of which are no harm (near miss) and low harm incidents. NHS England’s National Patient Safety Team reviews hundreds of these incidents each week via LFPSE looking for risks that can be acted on, including through issuing National Patient Safety Alerts and collaborating with partners to address patient safety issues identified. NHS England estimate this work saves 160 lives per year, reduces disability due to severe harm incidents by around 480 cases per year and saves £13.5m in additional treatment costs per year. This is in addition to the primary responsibility of NHS providers to respond to these patient safety incidents as they are recorded locally.

No statement on delivery from UK Government has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.