Dozens of safety probes kept secret by trusts

Trusts are still keeping reports that reveal serious patient safety concerns secret, HSJ has discovered.

So-called “invited reviews” are often commissioned by trusts’ management from a medical royal college, when they are trying to deal with concerns about safety, quality or staffing in a particular service — or, in some cases, about individual doctors.

The providers are meant to publish a summary of the findings where they uncover safety or quality issues, but HSJ has established this is still routinely not happening.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, HSJ traced at least 49 reviews commissioned since April 2020. Only six had been published by the trust in a meaningful way, despite many others surfacing concerns about care.

Morecambe Bay inquiry chair Bill Kirkup told HSJ: “It is disappointing to see so many trusts continuing to treat invited reviews as confidential, despite clear recommendations. These are public services, and there should be transparency. Some detail may need to be redacted to maintain individual confidentiality, but I can see no justification for wholesale failure to disclose information that is in the public interest.”

Patient Safety Learning chief executive Helen Hughes added: “These reviews have the potential to unearth patient safety insights that are applicable far beyond the organisations they are focused on. Currently however, this learning is not shared widely in a consistent way to inform our understanding of patient safety risks and the need for improvements across the system.”

She said “privacy, personal sensitivity, and legal reasons… should not present an insurmountable barrier to extracting system-wide learning”.

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Source: HSJ, 4 February 2025