In brief

We have been supporting acute services across the south west of England to improve quality and patient safety. The vision of the leadership of NHS South West is that ‘all hospitals in the south west will be safer for patients and will have a standardised mortality ratio among the lowest in England’.

We have been working with NHS South West to build capability and implement measureable improvements in the overall safety of care in the participating hospitals. Technical support is being provided by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), based in the US.

Every acute trust in the region is involved in the project, and a programme of work has been developed to improve patient safety in a variety of clinical areas.

The project aimed to:

• build a wider base of hospitals that can demonstrate improved patient safety through reliable execution of evidenced-based practice
• build models for improvement within each hospital
• establish a strategy for spreading improvement within the participating hospitals
• create the ability to share learning regionally and nationally.

Part of the work has been to deliver a bespoke curriculum to build local capability in supporting patient safety, based on the successes achieved in the south west sites of the Health Foundation’s Safer Patients Initiative. This has involved:

• an in-depth assessment of current approaches to patient safety for every provider organisation
• the introduction of a measurement system across the strategic health authority (SHA)
• the introduction of a series of interventions tested in the Safer Patients Initiative.

The IHI has been commissioned to support the development of the curriculum, train faculty and other key staff, provide access to a project extranet, and coach the first wave of the collaborative work.