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This update presents statistics from the Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, a national NHS system for the recording and analysis of patient safety events that occur in healthcare. The LFPSE definition of a patient safety incident is something unexpected or unintended has happened, or failed to happen, that could have or did lead to patient harm for one or more person(s) receiving healthcare. This report shares the patient safety incident data from January to March 2025. Count of Event Types in LFPSE – based on patient safety event records from January 2025 to March 2025 LFPSE brings the feature to record patient safety event types beyond incidents. Recorders can now also upload patient safety risks, outcomes, and instances of good care. This is to ensure the database contains more instances of care that the healthcare system can learn from instead of only detailing errors involving patients. In the current period, 832,301 events were recorded to LFPSE, the majority of which were recorded as patient safety incidents (96.73%). Count of patient safety incidents by maximum physical harm – based on patient safety incident records from January 2025 to March 2025 Grading the degree of harm to a patient resulting from a patient safety incident can be a challenge for recorders, but by grading patient safety incidents according to the harm they cause patients, local organisations can ensure consistency and comparability of data. This consistent approach locally will enable LFPSE to compare, analyse and learn from data nationally. This grading can also be used to “triage” incidents for review both locally and nationally, ensuring the most serious events are looked at first. LFPSE also allows for grading of the psychological harm associated with the recorded patient safety incidents. This is an experimental field which seeks to explore if responses to safety incidents need to be different if psychological harm is considered separately from physical harm, rather than rolling them together into one measure, as was done in the previous National Reporting Learning Service (NRLS). Currently, NHS England states that there is low confidence in the grading of psychological harm, as users familiarise themselves with its use, and as such, it is excluded from this report.

The annual Cancer in the UK report summarises key data across the cancer pathway, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment and outcomes. It looks at where progress is being made and what challenges remain in the UK. Evidence in this report shows that improvements can be made across the cancer pathway – preventing cancers, diagnosing patients earlier and ensuring patients have access to the best treatment options – to attain outcomes that are among the best in the world. The report concludes by setting out the priority actions that are vital to addressing challenges faced by cancer services and lays out how data-led insights can strengthen our ability to beat cancer

The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS) is the largest patient safety data repository of its kind in the United States and one of the largest globally, housing over 5 million reports submitted since 2004. This article presents data from reports submitted to PA-PSRS in 2024. In 2024, 315,418 reports were submitted to PA-PSRS, marking a 9.5% increase from 2023. Reports of serious events rose by 7.3%, while high harm events increased by 1.1%. Of all reports, 96.0% came from hospitals, while 4.0% originated from nonhospital facilities (ambulatory surgical facilities (ASFs), birthing centres, and abortion facilities). The vast majority (96.0%) were incidents, while the remaining 4.0% were classified as serious events. Preliminary 2024 reporting rates show 32.2 reports per 1,000 patient days for hospitals and 11.4 reports per 1,000 surgical encounters for ASFs, with both rates increasing by 1.1 points from 2023 Error Related to Procedure/Treatment/Test (P/T/T) remained the most frequently reported event type overall, accounting for 33.4% of reports from all facilities combined and 47.6% from nonhospital facilities. Among serious events, Complication of P/T/T was the most common type, making up 57.7% of serious event reports from all facilities combined and 71.4% from nonhospital facilities.

The deletions began shortly after Donald Trump took office. CDC web pages on vaccines, HIV prevention, and reproductive health went missing. Findings on bird-flu transmission vanished minutes after they appeared.  On 7 February, Trump sacked the head of the National Archives and Records Administration. More than a hundred and ten thousand government pages have gone dark in a purge that one scientist likened to a “digital book burning.” Racing to comply with executive orders banning “DEI” and “gender ideology extremism,” agencies have cut materials on everything from supporting transgender youth in school to teaching children about sickle-cell disease, which disproportionately affects people of African descent. But they have also axed records having little to do with the Administration’s ideological priorities, seemingly assisted by AI tools that flag forbidden words without regard to context.  However, a coalition of archivists and librarians are trying to save this data and knowledge. They belong to organisations such as the Internet Archive, which co-created a project called the End of Term Web Archive to back up the federal web in 2008; the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, or EDGI; and libraries at major universities such as MIT and the University of Michigan. Here's where to continue accessing important information. Data Rescue Project Restored CDC Source Cooperative Wayback Machine

This briefing from the Health Foundation compares trends in mortality within the UK and with 21 high-income countries, based on new research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The findings are stark, underlining deep inequalities in health between different parts of the UK and a worrying decline in UK health compared with international peers. Key points: Improvements in UK mortality rates slowed significantly in the 2010s, more than in most of the other countries studied. By 2023, the UK female mortality rate was 14% higher than the median of peer countries and the UK male mortality rate was 9% higher. For both, the gap to the median widened significantly after 2011, and the UK’s ranking relative to peer countries has now worsened. Improvements in mortality rates slowed across all UK nations and regions in the 2010s – but there are significant geographic inequalities. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have higher mortality rates than England. Scotland is performing particularly poorly – of the countries studied, in 2021 only the US had a worse mortality rate. In 2021, mortality rates were 20% higher in the North East and North West of England than in the South West. People aged 25–49 have seen a particularly pronounced relative worsening of mortality rates. In 2023, UK female mortality rates for this age group were 46% higher than the median of peer countries, while male rates were 31% higher. Of the other countries studied, only Canada and the US experienced a similar worsening of mortality rates among this age group over the 2010s. This worsening of mortality rates is a sign of ill health in the working-age population, acting as a drag on economic growth. Of the main three causes of death for people aged 25–49, mortality rates for cancers and circulatory diseases improved between 2001 and 2019, but rates worsened for deaths from external causes. Deaths from external causes explain between 70% and 80% of the divergence in UK mortality rates compared with the median of peer countries over this period. While in the 2010s alcohol-related mortality rates for people aged 25–49 plateaued or declined and mortality rates for suicide (and undetermined intent) slightly increased, the rate of drug-related deaths rose sharply. In contrast, rates of drug-related deaths continued to decline for peer countries. As a result, the drug-related mortality rate in the UK was more than three times higher in 2019 than the median of peer countries. Geographic inequalities in drug-related deaths are stark among people aged 25–49. In 2019, the drug-related mortality rate in Scotland was around 4 times higher than in England. Within England, the drug-related mortality rate in the North East was 3.5 times higher for men and almost 4 times higher for women than in London. With the UK comparing poorly with many other high-income countries, improvement is both possible and urgently needed. This will require long-term action for economic recovery in areas of long run industrial decline; a strong focus on prevention; investment in public health services and action to address risk factors such as smoking, alcohol and poor diet; and a concerted effort to tackle drug-related deaths. These actions should be brought together in a clear strategy for tackling health inequalities. The UK government’s health mission promised just such an approach, but progress so far has been slow. This needs to change or the UK’s health will fall further behind its international peers.

This update presents statistics from the Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, a national NHS system for the recording and analysis of patient safety events that occur in healthcare. The LFPSE definition of a patient safety incident is something unexpected or unintended has happened, or failed to happen, that could have or did lead to patient harm for one or more person(s) receiving healthcare. This report shares the patient safety incident data from October to December 2024. Count of Event Types in LFPSE – based on patient safety event records from October 2024 to December 2024 LFPSE brings the feature to record patient safety event types beyond incidents. Recorders can now also upload patient safety risks, outcomes, and instances of good care. This is to ensure the database contains more instances of care that the healthcare system can learn from instead of only detailing errors involving patients. In this period, 814,560 events were recorded to LFPSE, the majority of which were recorded as patient safety incidents (96.46%). Count of patient safety incidents by maximum physical harm – based on patient safety records from October 2024 to December 2024 Grading the degree of harm to a patient resulting from a patient safety incident can be a challenge for recorders, but by grading patient safety incidents according to the harm they cause patients, local organisations can ensure consistency and comparability of data. This consistent approach locally will enable LFPSE to compare, analyse and learn from data nationally. This grading can also be used to “triage” incidents for review both locally and nationally, ensuring the most serious events are looked at first. LFPSE also allows for grading of the psychological harm associated with the recorded patient safety incidents. This is an experimental field which seeks to explore if responses to safety incidents need to be different if psychological harm is considered separately from physical harm, rather than rolling them together into one measure, as was done in the previous National Reporting Learning Service (NRLS). Currently, NHS England states that there is low confidence in the grading of psychological harm, as users familiarise themselves with its use, and as such, it is excluded from this report.

Most people acknowledge the limitations of discussing productivity in healthcare. The term productivity is taken from other sectors and easily applied to industrial settings but not to the complex, patient-centred business of caring for people. Productivity is essentially the output, in terms of quantity (and sometimes quality), produced relative to input. In its broadest sense in healthcare, productivity can encompass activities such as detecting diseases earlier, giving patients better quality of care, and getting better outcomes. However, it is often discussed in sweeping statistics and numbers. Despite recognising the limitations of productivity as a measure, people in healthcare continue to obsess about it and we really must stop, writes Jessamy Bagenal in this Lancet commentary, giving several compelling reasons why. 

This update highlights the significant achievements across the strategy’s national patient safety programmes. Martha’s Rule Martha’s Rule gives patients, families and staff a way to request a rapid review if they are worried that deterioration is not being addressed Piloted across 143 acute hospital sites and launched in May 2024. Between September 2024 and February 2025: - 2,389 calls made to escalate concerns; 73% from families seeking help and 47% relating to acute deterioration. 129 potentially life-saving interventions triggered, including: - 57 urgent admissions to high dependency or intensive care units - 60 transfers to specialist services (coronary care, respiratory care, return to theatre) - Changes in care for a further 336 cases, for example the introduction of a new medication such as an antibiotic. Calls unrelated to acute deterioration are also improving patient care, including: - 340 calls led to clinical concerns such as medication delays being addressed - 448 calls resolved communication issues. Maternity and neonatal care 1,499 neonatal lives saved through safer care bundle interventions, including improvements in optimal cord management and the administration of antenatal steroids 518 fewer premature babies with cerebral palsy from the administration of magnesium sulphate during pre-term labour; the estimated saving in lifetime care costs is £518 million Medicines safety 1,900 deaths prevented through medicines safety initiatives £9 million saved in admission costs Better management of long-term opioid use has significantly contributed to this. Against the 2021 baseline, data to November 2024 shows: - 596 lives saved over 2 years - a projected 1,802 lives saved from reversing the rising trend in opioid use - 3% reduction in high-dose opioid prescribing - 12,657 fewer patients a month on high-dose opioids, halving their risk of death from opioids - 5% sustained reduction in rate of opioid prescribing for chronic use. Safer use of valproate and oral anticoagulants, fewer incidents of gastric bleeding, methotrexate overdose and drug-induced acute kidney injury Early identification of deterioration (in addition to Martha’s Rule) New early warning system for staff treating children launched November 2023. Supporting 1,621 care homes to identify deterioration, reducing 999 calls, emergency admissions and length of hospital stays. Testing of PIER resources that help systems prevent, identify, escalate and respond to physical deterioration. Transforming how we learn and respond to patient safety events. Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), a revolutionary new approach to incident response that centres on maximising learning and patient safety improvement now implemented in every NHS secondary care provider and being piloted in 50+ GP practices. Embeds systems thinking and improved engagement with patients, families and staff, promoting a patient safety culture. Providers report they are better able to identify safety priorities and act quickly. Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service: full implementation by November 2024 across all NHS trusts of new national system for recording and learning from patient safety events. Real-time incident reporting across the NHS, with over 3 million patient safety events recorded each year. National medical examiner system National medical examiner system developed: local medical examiner offices cover the whole of England and Wales. Requirement for medical examiners to provide independent review of all deaths became statutory in September 2024. This system also provides enhanced support for bereaved families to ask questions and raise concerns about care, helping to identify hundreds of patient safety incidents that can then be responded to. Identifying and responding to patient safety risks The National Patient Safety Team’s statutory function to identify and act on emerging safety risks, including by issuing National Patient Safety Alerts. Annually this: - saves 160 lives - prevents 480 severe harm incidents - saves £13.5 million in treatment costs. New approach to National Patient Safety Alerts developed, including accreditation of alert issuing organisations. Building capability and capacity to address safety challenges Patient safety leadership Network of over 800 patient safety specialists created; they provide expert patient safety leadership, guidance and support at NHS organisations across England All patient safety specialists offered in-depth training in patient safety (see below) Patient safety training and education The first National patient safety syllabus launched in 2022 Over 1.47 million staff completions of the essentials for patient safety’ training Over 850,000 completions of the level 2 access to practice training. This is for staff who want to understand more about patient safety or go on to access higher levels of training Over 70,000 completions of the level 1 training for boards and senior leaders All patient safety specialists offered training in the advanced levels 3 and 4 of the syllabus – almost 500 completions to date 3,000+ digital clinical safety training completions Involving patients and the public in patient safety Framework for involving patients in patient safety published in 2021 Patient safety partner role introduced to enhance the involvement of patients in patient safety work at a national and local level From 2025/26 it will be an NHS Standard Contract requirement for all NHS trusts to have appointed and work with patient safety partners Simple steps to keep you safe during your hospital stay video and leaflet for patients developed Strengthening national patient safety systems Digital clinical safety strategy published September 2021 Primary care patient safety strategy published September 2024 Improving patient safety culture – a practical guide published July 2023 – setting out approaches for NHS organisations to improve their patient safety culture National work on assessing patient safety inequalities started to understand how harm is experienced unequally by different groups.

In today’s digital era, data is generated at an unprecedented scale. Healthcare is no exception— data is produced continuously as a result of our interactions with healthcare organisations - community, acute and tertiary alike. The challenge for healthcare institutions and their governance systems is to utilise this rich healthcare data  effectively and efficiently to improve patient outcomes. Towards this objective, AI is emerging as a key enabling tool. Infection prevention and control (IPC) units have varied work streams - infection surveillance, patient pathway monitoring, novel pathogen intelligence, policy and guidance directives and are best poised to take a leading role in utilising healthcare data to increase the impact of these activities.   IPC is poised to embrace the transformative potential of AI, ensuring its services evolve in step with technological advances.  Achieving this will require a multi-pronged approach to support the parallel development of both AI capabilities and IPC services.

Lord Darzi’s review into the future of the NHS  calls for a “tilt towards technology” to unlock greater productivity. But there’s a hard reality: many parts of the NHS aren’t yet ready to take advantage of what tech has to offer. Meaning, there’s a missed opportunity for trusts to streamline operations and transform care. Only one in five NHS organisations are considered “digitally mature”. And despite lots of progress in the last decade, there are still areas of the NHS relying on paper and non-digital processes. It makes embracing new technologies, such as AI, feel like an unattainable goal – one that goes beyond moving the health service from analogue to digital. As we enter this new era for the NHS, data and digital skills across the workforce will be fundamental to improving patient care, streamlining processes, and making cost savings.