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Safer care for all: looking beyond professional regulation

A photo of some older ladies doing physiotherapy
  • How can we create a more joined up and less fragmented health and social care landscape?
  • Why do inquiries into major patient safety failures not all have the same status and who makes sure that recommendations from these inquiries are implemented?
  • What can we do to ensure that the complex patient and public safety mechanisms - spanning the four countries of the UK communicate, cooperate and coordinate?

Currently people, places and products are not all regulated by the same bodies and there is no bird's-eye view of what is happening. Then add to the this mix - there are different approaches across all four UK countries. For example we oversee the 10 professional health and social care regulators (one of these operates solely in Northern Ireland, one in England, one in Great Britain and six in the UK and that is just the regulators of people not to mention regulators of products and places. 

Health and Social Care Safety Commissioners

One of the main conclusions we came to when we finished drafting the report and looked at all the challenges facing the health and social care sector in the UK today was the need for an organisation with a bird's-eye view of what is happening. An organisation that can report on inquiries and follow-up on their recommendations - a gap we highlight as part of the report. This is why our main recommendation in the report is to create health and social care safety commissioners (or equivalent) in all four UK countries.  These would be independent of government and look across the whole system through the eyes of the patient and service user.

Find out more

What would you like to read? We have several versions available. You can download:

There is also a Welsh translation available of front part of the report, including The essentials and the executive summary. You can download it here. 

Please get in touch (via the email address below) with us if you would like a Word version of the full report.

Get in touch

Contact us if you would like to join the discussion about how we can work together to make health and care safer for all. You can get in touch by emailing engagement@professionalstandards.org.uk