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Known as MBRRACE-UK, this outcome review programme’s latest report focuses on UK perinatal deaths of babies born in 2024, finding that rates of baby death continued to decrease in that year. Since MBRRACE-UK began, the number of babies who died shortly before, during, or soon after birth has been falling Stillbirth, neonatal mortality and extended perinatal mortality rates were lower in England and for the UK as a whole, compared with 2023. In 2024, the UK extended perinatal mortality rate was 4.77 baby deaths for every 1,000 births, which is 21% lower than in 2013. However, inequalities linked to deprivation, ethnicity and prematurity remain. Mortality rates continue to be higher in the most deprived areas, and babies of Black and Asian ethnicity continue to experience higher mortality rates than babies of White ethnicity. The report also highlights the relationship between ethnicity, deprivation and congenital anomalies, with some ethnic groups being more likely to live in the most deprived areas and congenital anomalies contributing disproportionately to neonatal mortality. But there are some small encouraging shifts, such as the fact that neonatal mortality for the most deprived group fell by 14%, while the gap between most and least deprived areas narrowed slightly after years of widening. These findings show that progress is being made in reducing baby deaths, but there is still important work to do – especially to tackle the gaps linked to deprivation, ethnicity, and how early in pregnancy a baby is born.

Kath Sansom, founder of Sling the Mesh, asked what should be an easy mesh data question. Except nobody at NHS England can answer. Which tells us everything about gaps in accountability. The question? How many women have had to have part of their bladder or bowel removed because pelvic mesh eroded into their organs? How many are now living with a stoma bag because of these complications? The answer should exist. It should be easy to find. It should be centrally recorded. But NHS England says it does not hold this information. We are talking about some of the most severe, life-changing outcomes possible and there is no national record. Women are instead told that the data might sit with individual Trusts, scattered and inaccessible unless someone tries to piece it together manually. That’s not transparency. That’s a system that doesn’t fully see the harm it has caused.

Friends and Family Test (FFT) gives patients the opportunity to submit feedback to providers of NHS funded care or treatment, using a simple question which asks how likely, on a scale ranging from extremely unlikely to extremely likely, they are to recommend the service to their friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment. Data on all these services is published on a monthly basis.

In this King's Fund analysis, Margot Kuylen and Dan Wellings consider the results of the Health Insight Survey and find that while waiting times have improved, for many the experience of waiting hasn’t. When asked how they would rate their overall experience of waiting for their hospital appointment, nearly half (46%) of respondents said it was poor. Crucially, this doesn’t just reflect dissatisfaction with the length of the wait. When asked in a separate question whether they were dissatisfied with the communication about their wait, a similar proportion (44%) of respondents said they were dissatisfied (a further 29% said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied and only 27% said they were satisfied).

Patient transfers accounted for nearly half of falls events reported to ECRI in a new analysis, underscoring how routine patient movement activities can create major safety vulnerabilities.  The latest data analysis from the ECRI and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Patient Safety Organization (PSO) shows that patient transfers, toileting and ambulation-related falls are the most common event types. About 30% of falls reported involved patients under 65 years old, challenging the assumption that fall prevention is solely or exclusively an issue for older adults. Data findings When falls happen: Patient transfers, toileting, and ambulation—all routine, necessary care activities—collectively account for more than 85% of reported falls.Transfer is by far the highest risk moment, accounting for nearly half of all falls (45.3%). Toileting is the second most common trigger at 30.7%, while falls occurring during ambulation accounted for 9.4%. Transfer-related falls were defined as those that involve patient movement from one surface or location to another, such as between a bed, chair, stretcher, or wheelchair. Ambulation-related falls occurred while patients were walking or moving through care environments, with or without assistance, including in their hospital room or hallway. Which patients are at risk: Falls are not limited to older patients. Working-age adults (18–64) represented the largest single age group in this analysis, accounting for 29.3% of falls events. This is a reminder that fall risk assessment and prevention protocols, especially in acute care settings, should not overlook younger adults. Where do most falls occur: In this data snapshot, falls are overwhelmingly concentrated in acute care facilities (68.1%) such as hospitals. Falls were also reported across post-acute care facilities like nursing homes, rehabilitation centres, home health, ambulatory care behavioural health, and cancer centres. This is somewhat a reflection of the membership base of the ECRI and ISMP PSO, which includes more acute care hospitals and health systems than nursing homes and post-acute care facilities. Power of reporting: The analysis demonstrates the importance of detailed event reporting. More than 9,000 of the reports were noted as ‘near-misses’ or unsafe conditions (rather than serious events or incidents of harm), which reflects ongoing efforts to encourage reporting. Organizations that collect and analyse near miss events are given insight into conditions, workflows, and processes that could lead to harm and more importantly an opportunity to prevent harm. Large “unknown” categories within fall location and patient age suggest an opportunity to better capture this information to strengthen organisations’ ability to fully understand risk patterns and identify opportunities for improvement.

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 2026. Count of Event Types in LFPSE – based on patient safety event records from January to March 2026 LFPSE brings the feature to record patient safety event types beyond incidents. Recorders can 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, 829,300 events were recorded to LFPSE, the majority of which were recorded as patient safety incidents (96.96%). Count of patient safety incidents by maximum physical harm – based on patient safety incident records from January to March 2026 Sometimes a problem in care can affect more than one patient, or none at all. To capture this, as a new feature of LFPSE, recorders can submit information for multiple patients per incident, meaning there can be multiple degrees of harm per incident. For the following figure and table NHS England have taken the highest harm level per incident. NHS England identified and removed 64,223 incidents where the number of patients affected was unknown. Preliminary analysis suggests that these records likely represent incidents with no patients involved. NHS England will continue further data quality checks to validate these figures. During this quarter, 739,846 incidents had recorded a degree of harm. The majority of these incidents (94.2%) recorded low or no physical harm to patients. LFPSE has a new variable 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 National Reporting Learning Service (NRLS). Currently, 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. Related reading – previous quarterly data publications NHS England: Patient Safety Event Data Quarterly Publication – Quarter 3 2025/26 (October to December 2025) NHS England: Patient Safety Event Data Quarterly Publication – Quarter 2 2025/26 (July to September 2025) NHS England: Patient Safety Event Data Quarterly Publication – Quarter 1 2025/26 (April to June 2025) NHS England: Patient Safety Event Data Quarterly Publication – Quarter 4 2024/25 (January to March 2025) NHS England: Patient Safety Event Data Quarterly Publication – Quarter 3 2024/25 (October to December 2024)

The estimated number of deaths linked to long waits in Emergency Departments across England has surged almost tenfold over the past decade.  That’s according to new analysis published in the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s (RCEM) ‘State of Emergency Medicine in England’ report, which conservatively estimates that there were 15,860 excess deaths associated with long waiting times in English EDs in 2025.  That’s the lives of 305 people lost every week.  While the number of deaths is slightly lower than 2024 (16,644), further analysis reveals that the estimated mortality figure increased almost tenfold when compared to 2015 (1,657). RCEM’s report examines the scale of overcrowding in EDs and the impact this is having on patient safety and staff. Drawing on national data, research and frontline evidence from clinicians, it highlights how long waits, high bed occupancy and a lack of patient flow continue to lead to overcrowded emergency departments.  Long waits are closely linked to an increased chance of death within the following 30 days.   Further analysis for the previous year concerningly reveals nearly half a million people (489,138) waited 24 hours or more in EDs across England. This has increased by around 150,000 patients in just 3 years.  

A provisional summary of Never Events that have been reported as occurring between 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. When data for this report was extracted on 21 April 2026, 416 patient safety incidents were designated by their reporters as Never Events and had a reported incident date between April 2025 and March 2026, of these 416 incidents: 403 patient safety incidents appeared to meet the definition of a Never Event in the Never Events list 2018 (published 28 February 2018). This number is subject to change as local investigations are completed. 13 patient safety incidents did not appear to meet the definition of a Never Event.

This annual publication presents statistics of deaths reported to Coroners in England and Wales in 2025. Information is provided on the number of deaths reported to coroners, post-mortem examinations and inquests held, and conclusions recorded at inquests. 

In alignment with the implementation of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), East London NHS Foundation Trust conducted a comprehensive five-year analysis of reported incidents. This review analyses 411 completed investigations of serious incidents (SIs) and patient safety incidents (PSIIs) reported in the Trust from 2020 to July 2024. With patient safety as a top priority, this analysis examines whether key issues identified in these investigations have shown recurring patterns over time.

Qualitative research methods explore and provide deep contextual understanding of real world issues, including people’s beliefs, perspectives, and experiences. Whether through analysis of interviews, focus groups, structured observation, or multimedia data, qualitative methods offer unique insights in applied health services research that other approaches cannot deliver. However, many clinicians and researchers hesitate to use these methods, or might not use them effectively, which can leave relevant areas of inquiry inadequately explored. Thematic analysis is one of the most common and flexible methods to examine qualitative data collected in health services research. This article offers practical thematic analysis as a step-by-step approach to qualitative analysis for health services researchers, with a focus on accessibility for patients, care partners, clinicians, and others new to thematic analysis. Along with detailed instructions covering three steps of reading, coding, and theming, the article includes additional novel and practical guidance on how to draft effective codes, conduct a thematic analysis session, and develop meaningful themes. This approach aims to improve consistency and rigor in thematic analysis, while also making this method more accessible for multidisciplinary research teams.

This guidance is for users of the new Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, to provide context and guidance on selection of appropriate categories when recording incidents. It focuses on which Event Type is appropriate for different circumstances, and how to select the most appropriate options for the Levels of Harm categorisation required within Patient Safety Incidents. It covers the following topics: Definitions – event types Definitions – harm grading When are harm grading fields mandatory? Recording guidance questions and answers