The number of patient safety incidents reported to the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) by provider organisations, per 100,000 population.
A patient safety incident is defined as ‘any unintended or unexpected incident(s) that could have, or did, lead to harm for one or more person(s) receiving NHS funded healthcare’.
Purpose
This indicator aims to measure the number of reported patient safety incidents across NHS care settings. The aim is for incidence reporting to increase as the culture of reporting all incidents spreads more widely across the NHS. The ultimate goal is that the number of reported incidents remains steady or decreases, as the habit of reporting incidents becomes routine and these are learnt from.