Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve patient safety in hospitals.

The Government’s commitment to advancing patient safety in the National Health Service is demonstrated by various measures.

This includes delivery of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, which is overseen by NHS England. The strategy is now achieving its aims of saving an extra 1,000 lives per year. By April 2025, the strategy’s patient safety improvement programmes had led to over 1,500 neonatal lives saved, over 500 fewer cerebral palsy cases in premature babies, and more than 1,900 deaths prevented overall through medicine safety improvements, including work to reduce long term opioid use. Further information on the NHS Patient Safety Strategy is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/the-nhs-patient-safety-strategy/nhs-patient-safety-strategy-progress-so-far/

The strategy includes other key programmes, such as the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework, the Learn From Patient Safety Events service, the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus, and the Framework for Involving Patients in Patient Safety, that are focussed on improving the NHS’ systems, capability, and capacity to improve safety. Further information on the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework, the Learn From Patient Safety Events service, the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus, and the Framework for Involving Patients in Patient Safety is available, respectively, at the following four links:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/patient-safety-insight/incident-response-framework/engaging-and-involving-patients-families-and-staff-following-a-patient-safety-incident/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/patient-safety-insight/learning-from-patient-safety-events/learn-from-patient-safety-events-service/

https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/patient-safety

https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/patient-safety-involvement/framework-for-involving-patients-in-patient-safety/

Other measures include implementing Martha’s Rule in 143 hospital sites, which has led to hundreds of life-saving interventions and changes to care that have avoided harm, and implementation of scrutiny by medical examiners of all deaths that are not investigated by a coroner, in order to facilitate learning and improvement at a local level.