Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the financial cost of incidences of human error within the NHS; and what steps his Department has taken to reduce the likelihood of such errors.

According to a report prepared for the Department and published by Frontier Economics in October 2014, unsafe care can cost the National Health Service between £1 billion and £2.5 billion a year.

In order to improve the safety of patients, we have established various initiatives including:

- The Sign up to Safety Campaign officially launched in June 2014. More than 390 organisations have signed up thus far, and we are aware of more than 670 projects to reduce avoidable harm. Organisations that sign up must outline what they will do to strengthen patient safety, including a response to five key pledges and a safety improvement plan that demonstrates how they intend to save lives/reduce harm over the next three years. The campaign aims to help member organisations listen to patients, carers and staff, learn from what they say when things go wrong and take action to improve patient’s safety, helping to ensure patients get harm free care every time, everywhere;

- The Patient Safety Collaboratives, a programme to improve the safety of patients and ensure that continual patient safety learning sits at the heart of healthcare in England; and

- The NHS Safety Thermometer, a measurement tool for a programme of work to support patient safety improvement.