Transforming Patient Safety

The National Patient Safety Improvement Programmes (SIPs) collectively form the largest safety initiative in the history of the NHS. The SIPs, designed to support a culture of safety, continuous learning, sustainable improvement and collaboration across the healthcare system, are delivered by Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs).

Each PSC is each hosted by one of 15 regional Health Innovation organisations across England. The National Patient Safety Team at NHS England commissions the PSC to deliver safety improvement in their region via the Health Innovation organisations.

The PSC work closely with NHS providers and commissioners in their region to support the roll out of national and local initiatives aimed at improving patient safety.

The Patient Safety Collaborative has been developing since its inception in 2014 and in 2024-25 will support 5 priority areas:

• Maternity and Neonatal SIP (Preterm Birth & Deterioration in women and babies)
• Perinatal Culture and Leadership Programme (PCLP) for maternity services
• Deteriorating Patient (Reducing deterioration using PIER in systems and implementation of Martha’s Rule)
• Medicines Safety (reducing the use of high-dose opioids in non-cancer pain and two areas of medicine pipeline exploration work in support of potential future medicine safety programmes)
• System Safety (embedding of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) in hospitals and the implementation of PSIRF in primary care)

HI NENC is dedicated to continual improvement and learning across the healthcare system and will run both a Patient Safety Improvement Network (PSIN) and a Quality Improvement Network (QIN) for our region.