Safety watchdog urges Streeting to expand her role

The patient safety commissioner is urging the health and social care secretary to remove “constraints” limiting her role amid a government review of national watchdogs.

Henrietta Hughes was named the country’s first patient safety commissioner in 2022 by the Department of Health and Social Care, which restricted her role to “championing patients” and improving the safety of medical devices and medicines.

Two years on, her office still only has five staff, which the former NHS England regional medical director says is not enough to do “this enormous task”. She wants her remit to be expanded to cover “everything to do with keeping patients safe… and listening to patients’ voices”.

Her call comes as Wes Streeting last week announced a review of the six main patient safety organisations, including the commissioner’s office and her former employer the National Guardians’ Office, among others. Many expect it to lead to some of them being merged and scrapped.

She told HSJ: “We [all of the patient safety organisations] each have a narrow set of regulations… and I often have to signpost patients somewhere else.

“That’s a real disappointment to me – because I think the whole point of my role is to try and create a coherence to this disjoined, fragmented system.”

Dr Hughes added: “There’s a mismatch between what my role title is and what my remit is, and that’s really confusing for patients. So I would like to see those constraints removed so that my role is not just about medicines and medical devices.”

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Source: HSJ, 24 October 2024