Monthly data on patient safety incident reports

Rolling data updated monthly, to show the number of patient safety incidents reported to the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) in the last 12 months.

We have currently paused the publishing of this data while we consider future publications in line with the introduction of LFPSE.

Our publication provides timely organisational data on reporting to the NRLS, promotes data transparency, encourages more consistency in NRLS reporting patterns, and supports organisations to monitor potential under-reporting of incidents.

Please note: this data cannot be used to show changes in the occurrence of patient safety incidents over time. It shows the dates incidents were recorded onto the NRLS by providers, which can be some time after the date the incident occurred. It is also important if making comparisons over time to ensure you are comparing data with the same period in a previous year, to take into account any seasonal fluctuations in incident occurrence. If you are looking to make comparisons over time, please use our National Patient Safety Incident Report official statistics as this this allows for any delays in incident reports being uploaded to the NRLS. It is important to also refer to our NRLS data principles document for information on how to use NRLS data.

The data is based on the date each incident report was submitted to the NRLS and not the date the incident was said to have occurred. It represents the current position at the time data was extracted from the NRLS and is subject to change, should any reports be updated as further information becomes available.

The data is broken down by each month reported and degree of harm, and is refreshed and updated on a monthly basis.

Note: some trusts are now reporting incidents to the new Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, and are no longer reporting to the NRLS. As a result they are showing as reporting no reports in the NRLS monthly data report. We plan to start publishing data on patient safety events recorded on LFPSE soon, when more organisations have made the transition from reporting to the NRLS.

We are currently reviewing the format of the information we publish in our monthly NRLS data reports. We would welcome feedback from users on how they find the current excel spreadsheets and any improvements they would like to see. To send us your feedback please email nrls.datarequests@nhs.net

For Welsh monthly NRLS data please refer to the Welsh Government website. Our regular NRLS reports based on the date the incident occurred will continue to be published every six months.

How NRLS data should be used

We want to help all users of NRLS data to understand and use it appropriately. This is important not only for accurate interpretation, but to ensure we continue to encourage improvements in identifying and sharing information about patient safety incidents.

If you use NRLS data, then you should follow our data principles.

Learning from patient safety incidents

Find out how we learn from patient safety incidents reported to the NRLS to support improvements in patient safety and protect patients from harm. You can also read our Patient safety review and response report to find examples of the action we take in direct response to incidents reported to us via the NRLS and other sources.

*The threshold for including social enterprise organisations is those that report over 100 incidents a year.

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