Patients to be consulted on digital outcomes measures and shared decision-making
The PSC has welcomed the timetable for the outcomes and registries strand of the MedTech Strategy set out in the strategy One Year On report.
By the end of 2024, the plan is to:
- Onboard all NHS and independent healthcare providers to the Medical Device Outcome Registry Platform
- Unify the additional 22 NHS England registers
- Run a public consultation on digital patient reported outcome measures and digital shared decision-making.
The PSC Dr Henrietta Hughes said: ‘It is important that as many people as possible respond to the public consultation later this year as this is a critical opportunity to ensure that patients co-design a new system that works for them.’
PSC says patients and staff should respond to duty of candour review
The PSC is urging patients and safety experts to respond to the government’s call for evidence for its review of duty of candour. The duty of candour means providers must explain to patients and their families what has happened and why, if things do not go to plan.
PSC Dr Henrietta Hughes said: ‘I welcome the fact that duty of candour is being reviewed because it is important that people do not struggle to get information when something has gone wrong. Working with patients as partners is an opportunity for us to learn and improve. I would urge the public and clinicians to respond to this call for evidence.’
Minister for Mental Health and Women’s Health Strategy Maria Caulfield said the review would ensure that honesty and integrity remain at the heart of health and social care services. ‘We need to learn from our mistakes and that means first being honest about them – a cover up culture helps no one.’
The call for evidence will run for six weeks and the review is expected to be finalised by the summer.
Commons committee criticises lack of progress on patient safety recommendations
A critical report from the Health and Social Care Committee into implementation of patient safety inquiry recommendations concludes the health system ‘requires improvement’ was issued this week (22 March).
It found that inquiry reports often concluded that the recommendations were not always fully implemented despite being fundamentally accepted by the government.
In its report, the Panel highlights a declining percentage of NHS staff who feel safe raising concerns about patient safety as worrying. It rated funding for health and social care staff training to take up targeted interventions on leadership and organisational values as ‘inadequate’.
The committee’s report covers training for health and social care staff, which it deems to be requires improvement and inadequate in relation to funding and resource. And the embedding of a culture of safety in every organisation providing NHS healthcare in which staff feel safe to raise concerns also required improvement.
Steve Brine, Chair of the Health and Social Committee, said: ‘I welcome today’s report by our independent Expert Panel which we commissioned in the wake of the deep concern around the Letby case which gave rise to calls for another statutory inquiry. Investigations into major failures in the NHS, like the Thirlwall Inquiry into
Letby, are vital but it’s equally important to hold the government and leaders of organisations responsible for actually implementing the recommendations that are made to improve patient safety. It is therefore disturbing to hear of delays in fully implementing the majority of them.’
The Patient Safety Commissioner Dr Henrietta Hughes said the report findings were extremely disappointing. ‘If patient safety inquiry report recommendations don’t get implemented quickly and effectively people will continue to be harmed. We must provide organisations and staff the opportunity to learn from incidents and embed a just and learning culture.’
New report highlights lack of equity in health devices
The PSC has welcomed the findings of the Whitehead review of equity in medical devices, in particular the recommendations to take a system-wide approach to make improvements. Potential bias can be introduced at every stage of the medical device lifecycle – from the original concept for the device, through design and development, to testing and eventual deployment in the NHS – all set in the real-world context in which these devices operate.
These recommendations for concerted action by stakeholders now need to be implemented as a matter of priority with full government support and dedicated funding.
Dame Margaret Whitehead’s review found extensive evidence of poorer performance of pulse oximeters for patients with darker skin tones. These devices over-estimate true oxygen levels in people with darker skin tones to a greater extent than with lighter skin. Evidence of harm stemming from this poorer performance has been found in the US healthcare system, where there is a strong association between racial bias in the performance of the pulse oximeters and delayed recognition of disease, denied or delayed treatment, worse organ function and death in Black compared with White patients. It did not find any evidence from studies in the NHS of this differential performance affecting care but said the potential for harm was clearly present.
It recommends immediate mitigation measures in the NHS to ensure existing pulse oximeters can perform to a high standard for all patient groups to avoid inequities in health outcomes.
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