The NHS in England has stepped up its data collection, a vital move towards a “fantastic reporting culture” aimed at improving patient safety. Dr Mike Durkin told the Patient Safety Congress at the ICC in Birmingham that the service’s culture of gathering data “had not dimmed” and 100,000 reports had been collated in the past […]

The most senior doctor in the NHS today warned against acceptance of unsafe and poor-quality care as he addressed the country’s biggest patient safety conference. Professor Sir Bruce Keogh told the Patient Safety Congress at Birmingham’s ICC that investigations into the Bristol Royal Infirmary and into Mid Staffordshire Hospitals had shown that good, caring people […]

Detailed data about the first four of the 14 hospitals involved in the Keogh Review into mortality rates have been made public. Professor Sir Bruce Keogh’s national review team has analysed information from across the NHS about all of the 14 hospital trusts who were identified in February as having had higher-than-expected mortality rates for […]

The Department of Health, in partnership with NHS England and Public Health England, has announced a number of improvements to the vaccination programme to protect against flu, meningitis C, shingles and diarrhoea. From July this year a new rotavirus vaccination programme will start for children under four months. Rotavirus is a highly infectious bug that […]

NHS England – formerly the NHS Commissioning Board – pledged to use all its powers to ensure that everything the NHS does is driven by the best interests of patients. As the Government published its initial response to the Mid Staffordshire Public Inquiry, NHS England said it aims to help build an NHS that is […]

The NHS Commissioning Board has today released the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) Organisation Patient Safety Reports. These show progress in the reporting of patient safety incidents from April to September 2012. The figures are collected to help clinicians to identify where and how incidents occur in order to prevent them in the future. […]

At its Board meeting today, held in public, the NHS Commissioning Board met with Robert Francis to discuss his public inquiry report into Mid Staffordshire and the vital changes that need to be made within the NHS. In his contribution, Robert Francis made clear the need to have enforceable contractual arrangements with providers around clear […]

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh today announced the members of the National Advisory Group which will guide his review into 14 hospitals which have had higher than expected mortality rates. The group will guide the overall review process and advise on how to ensure a robust and consistent approach is taken to conducting the individual investigations. […]

On 6 February, in response to a request from the Prime Minister, Sir Bruce Keogh (the Medical Director) announced an investigation into hospitals that are persistent outliers on mortality indicators. Sir Bruce identified an initial list of five organisations that had been outliers for two years on the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI), and said that […]

The publication of the Francis report into the failures at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust is an important moment for the NHS. The only acceptable legacy is that the NHS learns and changes. In this video NHS Commissioning Board Chief Executive David Nicholson talks about how we must develop our own detailed response to the Francis […]