Transforming Patient Safety

The National Patient Safety Improvement Programmes (SIPs) collectively form the largest safety initiative in the history of the NHS. The SIPs, designed to support a culture of safety, continuous learning and sustainable improvement across the healthcare system, are delivered by Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs).

PSCs are each hosted by one of the regional AHSNs and are made up of NHS providers and commissioners, including the ICS, hospitals, community, primary care, mental health and ambulance services.

The National Patient Safety Team commissions AHSNs to deliver improvement support through the PSCs and leads on the commissioning and assurance process.

The programme provides safety improvements across all healthcare settings.

The Patient Safety Collaborative has been developing since its inception in 2014 and in 2022-23 will support 5 priority areas:

The AHSN NENC is dedicated to continual improvement and learning across healthcare and will run a Patient Safety Improvement Network for our region. It also supports work in Quality Improvement, particularly through The Q community – The Health Foundation.

Our Programmes

National Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme (MatNeoSIP)

This programme started in April 2017 and is aimed at supporting improvement in the quality and safety of maternity and neonatal units across England. The overall aim of this National programme is to improve outcomes and reduce unwarranted variation by…

Managing Deterioration

The Managing Deterioration Safety Improvement Programme (ManDetSIP) aims to reduce deterioration-associated harm by improving the prevention, identification, escalation and response to physical deterioration, through better system co-ordination and as part of safe and reliable pathways of care. Contact Karen Verrill…

Mental Health Safety

The Mental Health programme aims to improve safety by reducing harm caused to people using mental health, learning disabilities and autism inpatient services by 2023. To contribute to the programme’s aim, the Patient Safety Collaborative will focus on creating safer…

Medicines Safety Improvement Programme

The Medicines Safety Improvement Programme (MedSIP) aims to reduce severe avoidable medication related harm by 50% by March 2024 through medicines optimisation and quality improvement. There are two main focus areas in the programme; reduction in inappropriate high dose opiate…

System Safety SIP

A new systems approach to patient safety and learning In August 2022, NHS England published the new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) outlining how NHS organisations should respond to patient safety incidents for the purpose of learning and improvement….

Q Initiative

Quality in the North East and North Cumbria The AHSN NENC has engaged and supported the Q initiative since its inception in 2015. Since the early days we have grown our membership to 291 and steadily rising. By increasing our…