Taking the temperature of patient safety in the NHS

As we start off a fresh new year in 2019 it's important to reflect on what has occurred in the previous one in terms of health quality and patient safety. Baselines and measures of improvement and deterioration need to be identified so that future challenges and opportunities can be fully met.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) annual report on the state of health care and adult social care in England for 2017/18 helps provide this overview and baseline assessment. The picture painted by the CQC (2018) is of an NHS creaking and groaning under major financial and capacity pressures while resiliently giving most people good care. It's important to remember that ever since the NHS was formed back in 1948 it has been short of money: there is infinite demand for its services with finite resources, and difficult choices must be made in trying to balance the budget. Add to the mix an increasingly elderly population presenting with complex, chronic or multiple conditions (diabetes, cancer, heart disease and dementia, to name a few) and we then approach a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges, as this report clearly articulates.