Ambulance Services: Emergency Calls
(asked on 2nd May 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the guidelines for (a) GPs, (b) community health technicians and (c) domiciliary social care providers on making serious incident reports about delayed ambulance responses to 999 calls; and if he will publish those guidelines.
No such assessment has been made by the Department. NHS England has published the Serious Incident Framework, which describes the process and procedures to help ensure serious incidents are identified correctly, investigated thoroughly, and learned from to prevent the likelihood of similar incidents happening again. The framework is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/serious-incident-framework/
As outlined in the National Health Service patient safety strategy, the new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) will replace the current Serious Incident Framework. There will be a 12-month period where organisations prepare for the transition to PSIRF, which we expect to be completed by Autumn 2023. During this preparation phase, organisations must continue using the current Serious Incident Framework.
NHS England has published guidance on raising patient safety incidents reports, which can be found at the following link:
This follows the introduction of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), which replaces the Serious Incidents Framework, and makes no distinction between ‘patient safety incidents’ and ‘Serious incidents’. The 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.