NEWS: New patient safety policy

As reported by GP Online, at a recent conference, NHS England revealed insights into their upcoming patient safety strategy, emphasising a primary care focus and collaborative approach to address avoidable harm

An NHS patient safety strategy published in 2019 had ‘quite a focus on secondary care’, she told the conference.

Given that at least 90% of patient consultations take place in primary care, she added: ‘We were really looking at how we could do something that would mean more, make more sense and be more easily implemented specifically within primary care.’

Patient safety

The patient safety policy lead cited evidence that around 97% of encounters in general practice are safe – but that there were around 20,000 to 30,000 cases of avoidable harm each year.

‘That’s quite an area there that we can learn from,’ she said – adding that on top of the personal cost of these incidents, the estimated financial cost was around £125m a year.

NHS England deputy medical director for primary care Dr Kiren Collison told the event that the new policy had been developed in consultation with providers and commissioners in a ‘ground-up’ way.

A key principle the policy was built on was to recognise the ‘huge pressures in primary care’ and ensure that whatever new model was developed to try to learn from and reduce avoidable harm did not add considerable new workload.

GP workload

Dr Collison said: ‘I’m a GP myself and I know the huge demands. I know there are capacity constraints. And I know that the workload is huge. So anything that is developed, needs to be in the context of that.

‘As a result, what we need to do is build on current infrastructure, not create a whole other industry around this but use what we’ve currently got and just enhance it. So that was really important to everyone who contributed to this draft strategy.’

Dr Collison pointed out that heavy workload itself was a potential driver of patient safety issues in general practice – and said that the current recovery plan was intended to bring down that pressure by reducing bureaucracy and freeing up GP time.

But she said the ‘main aspect’ of the draft strategy focused on how to prevent problems occurring and how to respond from things that go wrong.

‘Our group that came together said you really need to have a very supportive learning environment where it’s not a blame culture but it’s very much going to allow people to be very open and share their experiences,’ she said.

Dr Collison added that the policy would also aim to consider patient safety in general practice not in isolation, but as part of a ‘whole pathway of care’. ‘Primary care needs to be seen as just a part of the puzzle,’ she said. The deputy primary care medical director added that in the context of cases of abuse and violence against primary care staff, building staff safety into the policy was also key.