Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to replace the NHS Safety Thermometer with an equivalent system to track patient safety in NHS hospitals and community facilities.
NHS England and NHS Improvement have no plans to replace the National Health Service Safety Thermometer. The data generated from the thermometer has been shown to be not fit for current purposes and alternative data is available from other existing sources.
For falls prevention, pressure ulcer prevention, venous thromboembolism and catheter associated urinary tract infections, there is a well-established National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance or equivalent guidelines providing the best evidence on how to reduce harm. Such guidance is supported by a range of national audits and improvement capacity building, including support for measurement for improvement and new sources of patient safety data provided by Model Health Systems.