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Key recommendations Ask the patient if they would like to have the conversation and how much information they would want. All healthcare professionals reviewing patients with chronic conditions, patients with more than one serious medical problem or terminal illness, should initiate shared decision making including advance care planning in line with patient preferences. Conversations about the future can and should be initiated at any point. The conversation is a process not a tick-box, and does not have to reach a conclusion at one sitting. Be aware of the language you use with patients and those they have identified as being important to them, and try to involve all the relevant people in agreement with the patient.

Recommendations Human factors and behaviour: Each Baby Counts has demonstrated that human factors are recurrent themes that need to be urgently addressed at a systemic level. Research is required to establish how to operationalise learning from this report into practice with improved clinical outcomes. Workload and workforce challenges: Develop and fund an appropriate tool to record current workload and anticipate the obstetric care required for the population. This tool should complement the midwifery acuity tools currently implemented nationally. Research is required to identify safe obstetric staffing standards for the workload and acuity, to guide policy-level changes for the workforce. Communication: All staff must be familiar with using their unit emergency communication and escalation protocols, in particular where emergency buzzers are located and how to activate a switchboard emergency call. This should be mandatory in departmental induction and included in simulated escalation calls during local multidisciplinary team training.

Summary of findings and recommendations People living in the poorest neighbourhoods in England will on average die seven years earlier than people living in the richest neighbourhoods. People living in poorer areas not only die sooner, but spend more of their lives with disability – an average total difference of 17 years. The Review highlights the social gradient of health inequalities - put simply, the lower one's social and economic status, the poorer one's health is likely to be. Health inequalities arise from a complex interaction of many factors – housing, income, education, social isolation, disability - all of which are strongly affected by one's economic and social status. Health inequalities are largely preventable. Not only is there a strong social justice case for addressing health inequalities, there is also a pressing economic case. It is estimated that the annual cost of health inequalities is between £36 billion to £40 billion through lost taxes, welfare payments and costs to the NHS. Action on health inequalities requires action across all the social determinants of health, including education, occupation, income, home and community.

What are PFD reports? There is a statutory duty for coroners to issue a PFD report to any person or organisation where, in the coroner’s opinion, action should be taken to prevent future deaths. These reports are made publicly available on the Coroners Tribunals and Judiciary website with the organisations involved having a duty to respond within 56 days. When serious incidents occur in healthcare that result in the death of a patient, PFD reports play a key role in identifying what went wrong and the actions needed to prevent this reoccurring. These crucial insights may often be applicable beyond the organisation in which this took place and provide a point of wider system learning. Implementing actions and sharing learning While these reports provide a wealth of information, the key challenge is ensuring that we utilise these to their full extent to improve patient safety and care. At Patient Safety Learning while we recognise the important role these reports have to play, we have some concerns about how they are currently acted on. Implementing actions When actions are requested by the coroner, it is not clear under the current system whether there is a structured process, either at a national or individual organisation level, for monitoring the actions implemented in response to the PFD report. There is also an open question about who is held accountable if the actions requested are not fully implemented, or if the response taken is ineffective. It is difficult to assess how healthcare providers go about this as there appears to be no specific system of monitoring this at a national level. Sharing learning As noted earlier, often the learnings from PFD reports may be applicable beyond the organisation involved. However, at present there appears to be no clear system of sharing these outcomes more widely. Although these reports are published online, they are not in an easily searchable or shareable format and it is difficult to draw out common themes, actions and responses. Furthermore, it is not clear whether NHS England and NHS Improvement undertake any central trend analysis or review to draw out common themes that may be applicable to all organisations, in the same way that the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch does when it publishes its investigation reports. What do we want to see? We have recently written to the Chief Coroner, Judge Mark Lucraft QC, to raise these issues. We have also drawn this to the attention of Dr Alan Fletcher, the National Medical Examiner. As the new National Medical Examiner system is currently being rolled out across England and Wales, their role in ‘ensuring proper scrutiny of all non-coronial deaths’ will be complementary to the current PFD system. We feel it is important that coroners and medical examiners take a consistent approach to reporting and sharing learnings as widely as possible. When we receive responses, we will take this up directly with NHS England and NHS Improvement, and other national bodies with responsibility for patient safety, along with our ideas of actions that we feel could help to address the current gaps in the system: Implementing actions 1) Analyse reports – Sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs)/Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to carry out annual thematic reviews of all PFD reports, Serious Incident (SI) reports and associated safety action plans. These plans can inform future commissioning, safety action plans and Care Quality Commission oversight. 2) National oversight – put in place a clear system of national oversight. Shared learning 3) Increase transparency – make all PFD reports, SI reports and their associated safety action plans available in the public domain. 4) Improve accessibility – create a central repository for all PFD reports, SI reports and associated safety action plans in one database searchable by actions and themes. 5) Standards – put in place patient safety standards for each STP and ICS, with requirements on individual trusts, primary care networks and service providers to share learning from these reports. 6) Publish an annual report – on PFD reports and SI reports including themes for learning and action.