UK - Healthcare Commission: top healthcare bodies make pledge on patients' safety at high-level summit
Keywords: Patient care, Health services
Key healthcare organizations have made a public commitment to working together to improve the safety of care received by patients, at a high-level summit hosted by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) and the Healthcare Commission.
The summit reinforces the message that the safety of patients is at the heart of healthcare, and that all organizations involved in the provision of care have a role to play in achieving this.
As a response to Safety First, the recently published report from the Department of Health, the NPSA and Healthcare Commission have jointly drawn up a charter of commitment and action. This identifies several key actions which signatories will commit themselves to.
Health Minister Lord Hunt said: “Patient safety is my top priority. I welcome this initiative – it’s an excellent idea and I give it my full support. I will do everything I can to encourage all the relevant groups to sign up to this charter.”
Lord Naren Patel, Chairman of the NPSA, said: “The core function of the NPSA is the collection of information on patient safety. Our focus is on getting the best quality information about patient safety incidents, and sharing this information with our partners in healthcare in order to help them in their role in developing solutions, in their role as educators, in their role as regulators. We will feed back to those providing care, and produce reports that will help them to deliver safer care, and we will promote a culture that encourages reporting of adverse events so that lessons may be learned for the benefit of patients. Safer care for patients will not happen overnight –we as an organization will work with others to try and effect a real difference which has the potential to change things for patients.”
Sir Ian Kennedy, Chairman of the Healthcare Commission, said: “The Healthcare Commission has placed the safety of patients at the head of our priorities and in doing so we are sending a signal to all corners of the NHS and the independent healthcare sector that the current state of affairs must change. We believe that working in partnership with other regulators and providers will be critical to achieving this. Safety is the business of all who care for patients.
“The signing of the charter today is important. It signals that those who can make a difference in their various ways are coming together and agreeing to work together to improve the safety of patients. This is a very important step on the way to creating a culture of commitment to safety must be fostered and embraced by all those involved in providing care.”
This new public declaration of commitment will affirm that the organizations signing the charter will:
encourage renewed engagement, contributions and challenge from professionals, from other health service staff and organizations, and from patients and the public to support us in delivering our commitment to safety;
ensure that safe care is a key priority in our work – in practice, not just words;
work together on programmes and initiatives to contribute to improvements in the safety of care that will benefit patients;
exchange information, data and intelligence actively when it is appropriate to do so in the interests of patients’ safety;
encourage all those responsible for providing healthcare to report adverse events, when things go wrong, or “near misses”, so that lessons may be learned; and
contribute to the creation of a culture and environment which promotes improvement and learning by individuals, organizations and systems, to prevent harm.
For further information: www.healthcarecommission.org.uk/
