Tag: Patient Safety

WHO flag.

WHO and Global Patient Safety: A View from Across the Pond

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By John Tingle

After months of heavy criticism of the World Health Organization, President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States would end its relationship with the WHO.

As the organization shoulders sustained disparagement from President Trump, it is worth highlighting the critical work the WHO has done over the years. This post will focus on the role the WHO has played in promoting patient safety around the world and in the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) through useful materials and key initiatives.

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Patient Safety and Health Quality in the NHS (National Health Service) in England: A Zip Code Lottery?

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By John Tingle

The independent regulator of health and social care in England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regularly produces detailed inspection reports on the health and care organisations that it regulates. These reports show that quality of care and patient safety are not consistent across England’s health and care facilities. Wide variations in quality and safety between core services in the same NHS hospital or in the same locality as well as regionally are sometimes revealed. It is clear from reading the reports that patient safety and health quality cannot be a measured as a constant across England.

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The Ostrich Syndrome and Patient Safety

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By John Tingle

Sadly, the NHS (National Health Service) in England is littered with examples of cases where individuals and organisations have seemingly buried their heads in the sand when patient safety errors have occurred. Attitudes that can be seen in past reports range from,’ it’s not my responsibility’, to procrastination, or passing the buck, assuming that another organisation is dealing with the matter or just simply delaying a response or even ignoring the situation completely.

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Photograph of a report on a table, the report is labeled, "NHS"

The NHS In England: Patient Safety News Roundup

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By John Tingle

There is always a lot happening with patient safety in the NHS (National Health Service) in England. Sadly, all too often patient safety crises events occur. The NHS is also no sloth when it comes to the production of patient safety policies, reports, and publications. These generally provide excellent information and are very well researched and produced. Unfortunately, some of these can be seen to falter at the NHS local hospital implementation stage and some reports get parked or forgotten. This is evident from the failure of the NHS to develop an ingrained patient safety culture over the years. Some patient safety progress has been made, but not enough when the history of NHS policy making in the area is analysed.

Lessons going unlearnt from previous patient safety event crises is also an acute problem. Patient safety events seem to repeat themselves with the same attendant issues

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Practice Fusion: it’s data use, not de-identification, that matters

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By Leslie Francis

Practice Fusion, an electronic health record (EHR) vendor, just settled with the Department of Justice to pay a $145 million fine for alleged kickbacks from an unnamed pharmaceutical company.  The DOJ contended that the company had taken kickbacks in exchange for including practice alerts to encourage physicians to prescribe opioids.  But paid-for prescription alerts were not the only practices engaged in by Practice Fusion with de-identified patient data.

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Improving the Mindset on NHS Complaint Handling

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By John Tingle

History has not served the NHS (National Health Service) complaints system well

History has not served the NHS complaints system well. There have been many reports about NHS complaints going back well over two and a half decades, saying the same or similar things about the system. Many have argued and continue to argue that the NHS complaints system needs to be much more responsive, simpler in operation and less defensive. It is fair comment to argue today that the NHS complaints system is still plagued with endemic and systemic problems. The NHS has never been able to gets its health care complaints system right.

Two contemporary reports, one published in 2018 and the other in 2020, give support to the view that the NHS needs to do much more to improve how patient complaints are handled. Read More

Senior female woman patient in wheelchair sitting in hospital corridor with nurses and doctor

Care Quality Commission Annual Assessment of Health and Social Care

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By John Tingle

The independent regulator for health and social care in England, the Quality Care Commission (CQC) has recently published its annual report on the real-time state of health and social care in England. It analyses trends, shares examples of outstanding, good, and poor health care care practices. It provides a true, unabashed account of issues facing the National Health Service (NHS) and health care delivery.

A Health System Stretched

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Hand placing wood toy block on top of a tower. The blocks all have images of medical-related items on them, like pills, stethoscope, syringe

Lost in the Jungle of Patient Safety Reports, Publications and Initiatives?

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By John Tingle

In terms of the progress of developing a patient safety culture in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, the Daily Telegraph reports comments made by Professor Ted Baker, the Chief Inspector of Hospitals at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) at a recent conference in London. He held the view that “little progress” has been made improving patient safety in the NHS in 20 years, and that never events such as wrong site surgery were still happening because the overall culture is one of defensiveness. The Telegraph reported, “He told The Patient Safety Learning conference that hospital managers routinely hide evidence from the CQC, because they regard the organisation as out to blame them.”

The Telegraph also mentions an NHS estimate in July that 11,000 patients a year may be dying as a result of blunders, partly as a result of a “blame game” culture between staff.

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Photograph of a report on a table, the report is labeled, "NHS"

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England: Annual Review of Progress

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By John Tingle

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) occupies a pivotal role in the National Health Service (NHS) and social care sector in securing health quality and patient safety. Its inspection activities through its reports and publications form the backbone of quality and safety in these sectors. As the independent regulator of health and social care in England it faces a mammoth task. The CQC has recently published its annual report and accounts, which provide useful insights into its work. The report provides a window on how England regulates health, social care quality, and patient safety. There is detailed reflection in the report about how the organisation can better perform its functions and the challenges and opportunities currently facing it.

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