Dr. Penny Dash’s review of patient safety has concluded that there has been: “a shift towards safety over the last 5 to 10 years, with considerable resources deployed, but relatively small improvements have been seen”. CSJ provides an overview of the key findings of the review and the wider response to the report.
Dr. Penny Dash's Review of patient safety across the health and care landscape was first commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, following a review into the operational effectiveness of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in the summer of 2024. Finally published on 7 July 2025, her patient safety review opens with some key statistics: of around 600 million patient interactions with the NHS a year, around 3,000 (1 in 200,000) result in a safety investigation.
She points out that if the UK had performed at the level of the top decile of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 2022, there could have been 780 fewer deaths per year due to unsafe care.
Furthermore, of the avoidable deaths in 2022 in England and Wales, around 65% could be attributed to conditions considered preventable (around 82,000 deaths). While many of the underpinning drivers of ill health are beyond the scope of the NHS, there remains "considerable opportunity to ensure more consistent delivery of high-quality care", she concludes. She points out that 4.4 million people have diabetes, but less than two-thirds receive recognised best practice care. In the worst-performing GP practice, the figure was under 2%.
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