Safety and quality in healthcare: why the distinction is important (14 May 2026)

Summary

In this blog, Ted Baker discusses a new paper by Health Services Safety Investigation Body (HSSIB) colleagues and highlights the call for a fundamental rethink of how the NHS views and prioritises patient safety.

Ted argues that healthcare has long confused quality with safety, often treating safety as just one dimension alongside outcomes and patient experience. This framing has encouraged a false idea that trade‑offs are acceptable, particularly under pressure, even though safety and outcomes are interdependent and should never be weighed against one another.

A new HSSIB research paper reviewing 118 national investigation reports, found that where trade‑offs occurred, safety almost always lost out to efficiency, timeliness or experience initiatives, and there were no examples where prioritising safety harmed other aspects of quality. This directly challenges claims that the NHS has focused too much on safety.