Patients: Safety

(asked on 3rd July 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 19 June 2018 to Question 152793 on Patients: Safety, whether any steps have been taken to determine the reason for the increase in never events.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 9th July 2018

The Government is committed to eradicating Never Events and ensuring best practice is shared throughout the health care system.

That is why in December 2017, the Secretary of State commissioned the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to undertake a safety thematic review of Never Events, under Section 48 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

The CQC’s review, which is expected to report in autumn 2018, will examine the underlying issues in National Health Service trusts in England that contribute to the occurrence of Never Events and identify the learning that can be applied to wider safety issues.

The ‘Never Events Policy and Framework’ was revised in March 2015 and the definition of Never Events changed to provide further clarity over their purpose, and; to ensure incidents are easily identifiable when they occur and are not dependent on the severity of outcome of the incident.

The list of Never Events was reviewed at the same time to ensure that they were all compliant with the revised definition and to consider any new issues that were appropriate to be introduced as Never Events into the NHS in England.

Further revisions to the Never Events policy and framework and an updated Never Events list were published in January 2018. Therefore it is not possible to compare the number of Never Events reported on an annual basis.

As mentioned in my earlier reply to Question 152793, NHS providers are encouraged to report all Never Events, and the CQC regards failure to report a Never Event, a breach of a provider’s registration requirement.

The number of Never Events reported by independent providers is also increasing as they report more incidents to our National Reporting and Learning System.

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