Large scale organisational intervention to improve patient safety in four UK hospitals: mixed method evaluation (February 2011)

Summary

Benning et al. conducted an independent evaluation of the first phase of the Health Foundation’s Safer Patients Initiative (SPI), and identified the net additional effect of SPI and any differences in changes in participating and non-participating NHS hospitals.

Four hospitals (one in each country in the UK) participated in the first phase of the SPI (SPI1). The SPI1 was a multi-component organisational intervention delivered over 18 months that focused on improving the reliability of specific frontline care processes in designated clinical specialties and promoting organisational and cultural change.

The authors found that the introduction of SPI1 was associated with improvements in one of the types of clinical process studied (monitoring of vital signs) and one measure of staff perceptions of organisational climate. There was no additional effect of SPI1 on other targeted issues nor on other measures of generic organisational strengthening.