The Health Service Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB):The New Kid On The Patient Safety Block

By John Tingle

The Department of Health and the government in England have published a draft Bill for discussion which will create a Health Service Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) with powers enshrined in law. The HSSIB replaces the current Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) which operates under the umbrella of NHS Improvement and came into operation in April 2017. Unlike the HSIB, the new HSSIB will be independent of the NHS, and have its own statutory power base. The HSSIB will not be responsible for investigating all serious patient safety incidents in the NHS and existing frameworks will remain.

Eight fact sheets have been published by the Department of Health to accompany the draft Bill which explain its purpose and rationale and how everything will work. It is expected that the HSSIB will investigate up to 30 serious patient safety issues a year and will have an annual budget of £3.8 Million.

It will be important for the HSSIB to manage public and NHS expectations of what it can actually achieve given its small budget, staffing and the number of investigations that it intends to carry out. There are around 24,000 serious patient safety incidents a year in the NHS. The small-scale operation of the HSSIB can be justified as it will act as an exemplar of good investigative practice and will cascade down standards into the NHS.

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