Patient safety is central to our NHS, ensuring that people are able to seek the care that they need with the confidence they will be safe doing so.
You may be aware that the Government has established the Health Services Safety Investigations Body as an independent statutory body, through the Health and Care Act. This builds on the work of the Healthcare Safety Investigations Branch, with the function of investigating incidents that occur in England during the provision of health care services which have, or may have, implications for the safety of patients. I fully support these steps to empower staff and patients to report incidents, enabling NHS staff to learn and better protect future patients.
In December 2021, the Government published its response to the findings of the inquiry into the issues raised by disgraced surgeon, Ian Paterson. The Government accepted the overwhelming majority of the recommendations made by the inquiry and set out an implementation plan of 40 actions to put those recommendations into effect. The Government published a progress report on the implementation plan in December 2022. The report provides full details of this progress against the four themes of the Government’s response as laid out in the implementation plan, and demonstrates that good progress has been made.
In 2021, the Government responded to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices review and set out an ambitious programme of change centred on patient safety. The main features are improving how the system listens to and responds to concerns raised by patients, strengthening the evidence base on which decisions are made, and improving the safety of medicines and devices.
I was encouraged to see the outcome of the consultation on the role of a Patient Safety Commissioner, acting on the second recommendation of the Review. Views were sought on a range of proposals from terms of office to remuneration and, in light of support for each proposal, the Government will proceed with them. I welcome the appointment of Dr Henrietta Hughes OBE as the first ever Patient Safety Commissioner for England in July 2022.
Further, the NHS published a Patient Safety Strategy in 2019 and this is updated yearly. This plan sets out how the NHS looks to continuously improve patient safety, building on the foundations of a safer culture and safer systems.