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Keep up to date with the latest news, research and activity in patient safety.

NHSE launches programme to enable ‘patient power payments’

Work has begun to create a new national feedback system to support the government’s proposed “patient power payments”, which would see individual members of the public able to affect how much money providers and commissioners receive for treating them.
A government procurement notice  states a contract to “scope and design a future model and implementation roadmap for the system-wide collection, analysis, presentation and use of feedback from people receiving care across the NHS” will be awarded by early November 2025. 
The work will “contribute innovative thinking and delivery expertise” to a new national programme, entitled: “The Future of Patient Feedback – A Roadmap for Measurement, Insight and Improvement”.
The 10-Year Health Plan stated the government’s intention to “trial new patient power payments”. These would involve patients being contacted to ask “whether the full payment for the costs of their care should be released to the provider or whether a proportion should go instead to a regional improvement fund”.
The plan added: “We believe this will make providers pay much more attention to the experiences of their patients. These payments could be particularly powerful in clinical services which have failed to engage with and respond to patient concerns for too long.”
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: HSJ, 12 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Knee implant used by NHS known for years to be faulty

A knee-replacement implant, used in thousands of UK operations, was known to have a concerning failure rate eight years before it was finally withdrawn, the BBC has discovered.
Patients have told File on 4 Investigates how they were left immobile or addicted to painkillers after receiving the NexGen knee implant, because it ended up slipping out of place. Hundreds of people have now had to undergo a second corrective operation.
Knee surgeons say the implant's US manufacturer, Zimmer Biomet, took too long to acknowledge there was a problem with one particular component.
Zimmer Biomet says patient safety is its "top priority" and that its products are approved in accordance with the relevant regulations.
Debbie Booker from Southampton had an operation to replace her left knee in 2016.
Although initially it appeared to have been successful, she started to experience severe pain a year later while on holiday in Majorca.
"I laid a bag of ice on my knee and for four days I had to do that every few hours because I was in agony," she says.
Debbie says the pain resulted from the knee implant slipping from the tibia and wearing away the bone.
Over the next few months she says she became reliant on prescription painkillers: "I was on fentanyl and morphine. It took me a long time to come off of the morphine because I was addicted."
Zimmer Biomet started marketing this modified version in 2012. It was cheaper than the earlier model, so it made financial sense for the NHS, according to Prof David Barrett, a knee specialist at Southampton University.
"[The NHS] were justified by saying, 'we have every reason to think it'll be fine,'" he says.
In the decade that followed, more than 10,000 patients were fitted with this version of the implant.
However, File on 4 Investigates has discovered that concerns were first flagged in 2014 by the National Joint Registry (NJR) which keeps a record of implant surgery across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
At that point, there was insufficient data to draw any reliable conclusions, the NJR told us. It is not an easy task to isolate a specific component that is not working as it should, it added.
Read full story
Source: BBC News, 12 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

‘None of us feel safe’: attacks on A&E nurses double in six years as waits rise

Attacks on A&E nurses have almost doubled over the last six years, with incidents often involving patients frustrated at waiting so long for care.
Nurses have been punched, spat at, pinned up against a wall, had a gun pointed at them and been threatened with having acid thrown at them, according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
NHS figures show that the number of incidents of violence against nurses in A&E units in hospitals in England rose from 2,122 in 2019 to 4,054 in 2024 – a 91% increase.
“Behind these shocking figures lies an ugly truth,” said Prof Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the RCN, which obtained the data using freedom of information laws.
“Dedicated and hard-working nursing staff face rising violent attacks because of systemic failures that are no fault of their own. Every incident is unacceptable,” she said.
Rachelle McCarthy, a charge nurse in the east Midlands, said that in her A&E department “even patients you would expect to be placid are becoming irate because of just how long they have to wait”.
Once she was punched “square in the face” by “a drunk, 6ft 2in bloke”, she said.
In another incident a patient in the waiting room of the A&E where the senior sister Sarah Tappy works in east London punched her in the head, knocking her unconscious. “The violence is awful. And it’s just constant. Nurses. Doctors. Receptionists. None of us feel safe,” she said.
A senior A&E nurse in England’s south-west said she had seen violence against staff in her wards many times, including a patient “pinning a nurse up against a wall” and another colleague being punched by a patient “in the groin and stomach”.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 12 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

USA: Surgery becoming safer in hospitals

Between 2019 and 2024, the mortality risk for hospitalised surgical patients declined nearly 20%, according to an analysis from Vizient and the American Hospital Association. 
Several factors contributed to this improvement in surgical outcomes. Between the first quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2024, post-operative sepsis declined 9.2%, post-operative respiratory failure by 19% and post-operative hemorrhage by 22.3%. 
The findings come at a time when acuity is projected to continue rising for hospitalized surgery patients, according to Sg2, a Vizient company. 
Infections and falls also decreased between 2019 and 2024, according to the report, which draws from Vizient’s database of more than 1,300 hospitals. The analysis focuses on 713 general, acute care hospitals across the U.S.
Among hospitalised surgical patients, vascular catheter-associated infections fell 9.2%, catheter-associated urinary tract infections decreased 6.6% and falls declined 10.7%. 
“While hospitals are proud of these efforts, we know there is always more work to do to deliver the highest quality care possible,” Rick Pollack, AHA president and CEO, said in a statement.
Read full story
Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 6 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

As my daughter died of ME, the state met in secret to blame me

In the final weeks of Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s life, her mother tried frantically to get her the palliative care that might make her death more comfortable. Maeve was in pain, too weak to chew, and dying of malnutrition from severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
Sarah Boothby had no idea that at the same time as she begged for help for her daughter, the people she was turning to were holding secret safeguarding meetings, discussing the possibility that Maeve’s condition was in fact caused or fabricated by her — and proposing Maeve’s forcible removal from her care.
Maeve was 27 when she died in October 2021 in the Exeter flat she shared with Boothby. She had discharged herself from hospital because, with no cure or viable treatment, she wanted to die at home.
Boothby and Maeve’s father, the Times journalist Sean O’Neill, knew from bitter experience that there was scant medical support available for ME. But they could not understand why it was so hard to get their daughter the help she needed for a more bearable death.
It was only when council documents were disclosed before Maeve’s inquest last year that they finally got answers.
Safeguarding records for the final year of Maeve’s life show social workers, nurses and a mental health assessor, instead of focusing on managing Maeve’s ME, were investigating concerns about Boothby. That year there were seven safeguarding meetings that neither Maeve, nor her parents, were invited to.
Boothby contacted The Sunday Times after an investigation last month found that hundreds of parents, mostly mothers, are being falsely accused of fabricating or inducing their child’s illness, and facing allegations of abuse when they seek medical care for them.
The ME Association says parents of children with ME or long Covid are “a sitting duck” for allegations of “fabricated or induced illness” (FII, of which FDIA is the most extreme example) because the condition is so poorly understood and it is challenging to get a diagnosis.
Read full story (paywalled)
Source: The Times, 10 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Scots urged to show Yellow Card to meds side effects

People in Scotland are being encouraged to take part in a national scheme tracking the side effects from taking prescribed medication.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland has made the plea after finding 57% of people surveyed across the country have experienced adverse effects from medicines.
The report, based on survey findings of more than 560 people across Scotland, found 84% of those who had experienced unintended effects from medicines had spoken to a healthcare professional, but only 10% reported it themselves to the national Yellow Card scheme.
It recommends raising awareness of the Yellow Card scheme – run by medicines regulator the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) – to improve under-reporting of medicines’ side effects and help new safety issues be identified as early as possible.
The report also recommends NHS Scotland improve the way it uses data from the Yellow Card Scheme to take action to improve medicines safety.
Read full story
Source: Health and Care Scotland, 8 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

‘Extra appointments’ celebrated by government deliver ‘modest impact’ on waiting lists

The “4.6 million extra NHS appointments” championed by the prime minister and health secretary have only had a “modest impact” on reducing waiting list clock stops, a vital part of cutting the NHS’s elective care backlog, according to new analysis shared exclusively with HSJ.
Last month, the government announced that “NHS staff have now delivered 4.6 million extra elective appointments since July – more than double the 2 million the government promised in its first year”.
Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting commented that NHS elective waiting lists had dropped by “more than 260,000 since we took office”. He added: “This is not a coincidence – it is because this government has delivered on the Plan for Change and put in the work to finally get our NHS moving in the right direction.”
However, analysis by The Health Foundation shows the extra activity has produced a much lower impact on waiting list clock stops than could have been expected based on the ratio between the two measures in the previous year.
The research concluded the “extra 4.6 million appointments” would have resulted in 1.2 million extra “clock stops” between July 2024 and April 2025, if the NHS had continued to convert average appointments to completed pathways at the rate it had done between July 2023 and April 2024.
But the analysis shows instead only around 340,000 additional pathways were completed between July 2024 and April 2025.
Read full story
Source: HSJ, 11 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Lucy Letby’s hospital slammed for A&E failings over ‘unsafe’ corridor care that left elderly patients delirious

Lucy Letby’s hospital trust has been slammed for a string of emergency care failings, including unsafe corridor care that led to elderly patients developing delirium.
The Countess of Chester Hosptial, where Lucy Letby worked and was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, was criticised by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) over delays in the care of sepsis patients, as well as elderly patients who were left for so long that they developed “corridor-induced delirium”.
The hospital was also criticised for having “visibly dirty equipment” and out-of-date medical devices, including some with damaged wires hanging out.
The watchdog has handed the trust a formal warning notice over the failures identified after the CQC’s inspection in February 2025. Concerns included:
Mental health patients being left with staff who were sleeping or on their phones. Patients with fractured hips are forced to sit in wheelchairs when they should have had beds. Inspectors found 59 incidents of delays to providing sepsis treatment, 44 of which were because the trust failed to take patients from ambulances quickly enough. Evidence that “long stays on the corridor” and the deterioration of patients because of this was “normalised”. Read full story 
Source: The Independent, 8 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Experts warn against DIY Botox-like injections available illegally online

People seeking cheap Botox-like injections have been warned by experts against doing it themselves due to the risk of “eyelid droops”, infection and even botulism.
There are growing concerns over the availability of medication called Innotox that is being sold illegally online in the UK. Unlike Botox, which comes as a powder that must be reconstituted for use in an injection, Innotox is a ready-to-use liquid – making it easier to self-administer.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, announced plans this week to introduce legislation cracking down on England’s cosmetic “wild west”, where there is scant regulation of who can deliver treatments such as dermatological filler and Botox.
Experts say Innotox is not licensed for use in the UK, unlike some other liquid Botox-like injections, meaning its quality and safety has not been assessed.
Aenone Harper-Machin, a consultant plastic surgeon and spokesperson for the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS), said the online availability of Innotox was frightening and appalling, and she cautioned against DIY jabs.
“People could be giving themselves eyelid droops and all sorts of weird asymmetries by injecting it in the wrong place, too deeply, too superficially. You can inject it into your blood vessel and give yourself botulism,” she said.
Health officials have said 41 recent cases of botulism poisoning in England have been linked to unlicensed jabs.
Harper-Machin has had Botox-like injections but said she would not self-administer them. “I wouldn’t have it done by anybody other than a consultant plastic surgeon who has intimate knowledge of facial anatomy,” she said.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 10 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

AI tools used by English councils downplay women’s health issues, study finds

Artificial intelligence tools used by more than half of England’s councils are downplaying women’s physical and mental health issues and risk creating gender bias in care decisions, research has found.
The study found that when using Google’s AI tool “Gemma” to generate and summarise the same case notes, language such as “disabled”, “unable” and “complex” appeared significantly more often in descriptions of men than women.
The study, by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), also found that similar care needs in women were more likely to be omitted or described in less serious terms.
Dr Sam Rickman, the lead author of the report and a researcher in LSE’s Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, said AI could result in “unequal care provision for women”.
“We know these models are being used very widely and what’s concerning is that we found very meaningful differences between measures of bias in different models,” he said. “Google’s model, in particular, downplays women’s physical and mental health needs in comparison to men’s.
“And because the amount of care you get is determined on the basis of perceived need, this could result in women receiving less care if biased models are used in practice. But we don’t actually know which models are being used at the moment.”
AI tools are increasingly being used by local authorities to ease the workload of overstretched social workers, although there is little information about which specific AI models are being used, how frequently and what impact this has on decision-making.
Read full story
Source: The Guardian, 11 August 2025
Patient Safety Learning

Trump, pharma industry discuss boosting medicine spending abroad to cut US prices, sources say

The Trump administration has been talking to pharmaceutical companies about ways to raise prices of medicines in Europe and elsewhere in order to cut medication costs in the United States, according to a White House official and three pharmaceutical industry sources.
US officials told drug companies it would support their international negotiations with governments if they adopt "most favored nation" pricing under which US drug costs match the lower rates offered to other wealthy countries, the White House official said.
The US is currently negotiating bilateral trade deals and setting tariff rates on the sector.
The Trump administration has asked some companies for ideas on raising prices abroad, two of the sources said, describing multiple meetings over several months aimed at lowering US prices without triggering cuts to research and development spending pharmaceutical companies insist would result.
Read full article.
Source: Reuters, 7 August 2025
Mark Hughes

Over-the-counter health test results accessible via the NHS App

Patients are now able to view the results of at-home blood and DNA tests from MyHealthChecked on the NHS App, through an integration with Patients Know Best (PKB). 
PKB is a personal health record which integrates data sources from NHS and non-NHS health providers as well as devices and information from patients.
The integration with over-the-counter test provider MyHealthChecked, which went live on 25 July 2025, also allows patients to securely share their test results with healthcare professionals. 
The service is available for customers wherever PKB is live with the NHS App, which includes 22 integrated care systems in England, and Swansea Bay University Health Board in Wales.
Read full article.
Source: Digital Health, 8 August 2025
Mark Hughes

AI chatbots ‘highly vulnerable’ to repeating false medical information, experts warn

AI chatbots are frequently prone to repeating false and misleading medical information, according to new research.
Experts have warned of a “critical need” for stronger safeguards before the bots can be used in healthcare, adding models not only repeated untrue claims but also “confidently” expanded on them to create explanations for non-existent medical conditions.
The team from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine created fictional patient scenarios, each containing one fabricated medical terms such as a made-up disease, symptom, or test, and submitted them to leading large language models. In a study published in journal Communications Medicine, they said that the chatbots “routinely” expanded on the fake medical detail, giving a “detailed, decisive response based entirely on fiction”.
Read full article.
Source: The Independent, 7 August 2025
Mark Hughes

A walk-in fishermen's clinic saved Tom from sepsis - and could transform the NHS

Tom Parker was working alone three miles (4.8km) off the Devon coast when his fishing boat hit a wave and lurched to one side.
He didn't know it at the time, but Tom, 37, had broken his fibula and badly damaged his ankle ligaments. He somehow hauled in his fishing gear and made it to hospital to get patched up, but months after the accident his wound just wouldn't heal properly.
It was only after he turned up at an innovative clinic on the quayside in Brixham that he was put on strong antibiotics and told he needed a second operation.
"Without that service, I would have probably ended up with my leg turning septic and I'm not too sure what would have happened after that," he says.
Under the 10 Year Health Plan, published last month, health officials said the NHS in England needed to undergo a radical shift, away from hospitals to community care, and away from treating sickness to preventing it in the first place.
Read full article.
Source: BBC News, 8 August 2025
Mark Hughes

A massive US measles outbreak has slowed but the start of the school year brings renewed risk of spread

There have been more measles cases reported in the US in the past month – at least 89 confirmed cases since the start of July – than in most years since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter century ago, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And this year’s total – 1,356 confirmed cases since January – is higher than it’s been in more than 30 years. There have been 32 outbreaks this year, accounting for nearly 90% of all cases since January. Only 10 states remain at zero cases reported this year.
Experts say that declining childhood vaccination rates across the US coupled with ongoing spread of measles in the US – and large outbreaks in neighbouring Canada and Mexico – are raising concerns as children start to gather for the new school year.
Read full article.
Source: CNN, 6 August 2025
Mark Hughes

Nearly half of doctors in Scotland witness care failings every week

A General Medical Council survey has found that 46 per cent of clinicians in Scotland see care failings weekly, a higher proportion than elsewhere in the UK.
The survey showed a reduction in the number of doctors noting safety incidents weekly in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since 2023 — but an increase in Scotland.
Backlogs in accident and emergency departments, resulting in thousands of patients stuck on trolleys for hours queueing for beds, are thought to be one of the issues driving potential errors.
Read full article (paywalled).
Source: The Times, 7 August 2025
Mark Hughes
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