East Cheshire, Greater Manchester

Patient Safety Collaborative - System Safety

The National Patient Safety Improvement Programme (NatPatSIPs) three programmes of work collectively form the largest safety initiative in the history of the NHS. They support a culture of safety, continuous learning and sustainable improvement across the healthcare system.

This programme aims to create optimal conditions for patient safety improvement across systems through two key drivers illustrated below:

To create optimal conditions for patient safety improvement to flourish

  • Establish, manage and mature effective Patient Safety Improvement Networks aligned to the footprint of each ISC in England
  • Support Patient Safety Improvement Networks to develop ICS level Patient Safety Improvement Plans
  • Establish and manage a breakthrough series approach, to bring together teams from NHS trusts and other relevant system stakeholders
  • Contribute to formal and informal regional/national learning and sharing of insights, including evaluation

About Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF)

The new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF):

  • Sets out the NHS’s approach to developing and maintaining effective systems and processes for responding to patient safety incidents for the purpose of learning and improving patient safety
  • Replaces the Serious Incident Framework and removes the ‘serious incident’ classification and threshold for it.
  • Embeds patient safety incident response within a wider system of improvement
  • Prompts a significant cultural shift towards systematic patient safety management

Who does PSIRF apply to?

PSIRF is a contractual requirement under the NHS Standard Contract; it is mandatory for services provided under that contract, including acute, ambulance, mental health, and community healthcare providers.

Organisations that provide NHS funded secondary care under the NHS Standard Contract but are not NHS trusts or foundation trusts (eg independent provider organisations) are required to adopt PSIRF for all aspects of NHS-funded care and may apply this approach to their other services for consistency.

Primary care providers may wish to adopt PSIRF, but it is not a requirement.

Achieving effective learning and improvement

The PSIRF is underpinned by 4 key aims:

The role of the Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Patient Safety Collaborative

Patient safety collaboratives (PSC) are asked to support NHS trusts in their adoption of PSIRF through:

  • Facilitating improvement as providers plan to meet patient safety incident response standards
  • Process mapping, quality improvement, practical implementation
  • Facilitating peer to peer learning
  • Capturing and sharing learning
  • Providing links across a national footprint

Supporting preparation for PSIRF

NHSE have published a PSIRF preparation guide which describes a number of phases the NHS trusts would be expected to work through before they implement PSIRF:

2022/23 Support Offer

We supported the implementation of PSIRF, key partners across the North West region who were commissioned around the first 3 phases collaborated to offer 5 events followed by action periods.  These were the NHS England recognised events for supporting  implementation of PSIRF.

2023/24 Support Offer

We supported NHS Greater Manchester ICP and providers of NHS care within Greater Manchester to implement PSIRF through a range of activities as shown in the diagram. This included the creation of a Greater Manchester Patient Safety space  on Future NHS – click here

PSIRF Testimonials

Case Studies

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