Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP) has today been announced as one of 15 new Patient Safety Collaboratives set up to help improve the safety of patients and ensure continual learning sits at the heart of healthcare in England.
The network of collaboratives, launched by Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, will focus on improving safety and empowering patients, carers and staff to highlight, challenge and implement local improvements in patient care. The programme is being co-ordinated by NHS England and NHS Improving Quality (NHS IQ), and each network is being led by an Academic Health Science Network (AHSN).
As the AHSN for North West London, ICHP will work with its partner organisations and service users to focus on specific areas of local clinical need. Its vision is to support its partners to embed safety in every aspect of their work. This means that:
- Patient and carer views are obtained and heard at all levels as a critical indicator of safety
- There is a strong ethic of team working and shared responsibility for patient safety
- Effective safety measurement and monitoring systems are in place in all clinical settings
- Clinical processes, practices, equipment and environment are standardised and simplified
ICHP is currently leading seven projects as part of its Patient Safety work programme. These include cross-cutting projects such as supporting broader citizen and service user engagement with patient safety and working with partners to develop new safety measurement and monitoring processes, as well as specific projects such as standardising junior doctor induction and developing a model to improve prescribing and communication between doctors and pharmacists. Read more about ICHP’s Patient Safety work programme.
Dr Adrian Bull, Managing Director of Imperial College Health Partners, said: “We’re pleased to announce that Imperial College Health Partners is now the Patient Safety Collaborative for North West London, aiming to improve safety across the area. This is an exciting opportunity for all AHSNS to work collaboratively with partners and service users to share and embed best practice in patient safety in all that we do.
“Our vision is to support our partner organisations to embed safety in every aspect of their work, and we have already started to make progress on this. We look forward to continuing working with our partners to focus on areas of local need, including supporting service and carer views to be heard at all levels, and ensuring effective safety measurement and monitoring systems are in place in all clinical settings.”
Background information
The Patient Safety Collaboratives programme is borne out of Professor Don Berwick’s report last year into the safety of patients in England and builds on learning from the Francis and Winterbourne View recommendations. The report, A Promise to Learn – a commitment to act, made a series of recommendations to improve patient safety; and called for the NHS ‘’to become, more than ever before, a system devoted to continual learning and improvement of patient care, top to bottom and end to end.’’
The programme is aligned with and supports the ‘Sign up to Safety’ campaign to make the NHS the safest healthcare system in the world by creating the culture to support a system devoted to continuous learning and improvement.
For more information contact natalie.hudson@imperialcollegehealthpartners.com
