Patient Safety Project

Patient safety is a key domain of quality in hospice care. Quality indicators are useful to demonstrate safe and harm free care.

What is the Patient Safety Project?

The Patient Safety Programme at Hospice UK comprises of 3 components:

Quarterly webinars
Quarterly bulletins and
Quarterly inpatient incident data collection.

The data collection aims to inform your quality improvement activities. The data will be aggregated and presented on a quarterly basis.

The data collection comprises of three core patient safety metrics:

Falls
Pressure Ulcers
Medication Incidents

See our Patient Safety metric definitions below (these were revised on 4 May 2022 following feedback from hospices in the Community of Practice).

Patient Safety Clinical Incidents Definitions

Metric Definitions 2022-23 final.pdf

Metric Definitions 2022-23 final.pdf (543.57 KB document)

Hospice UK Patient Safety Clinical Incidents Definitions

How does the project work?

Following a submission deadline, Hospice UK will issue a report with the Hospice self reported data and the aggregated data set.

The project runs on an annual cycle commencing in April. Reports are published quarterly.

Important dates for 2023/24:

Quarter	Months	Submission deadline	Final reports circulated
Q1	Apr, May, Jun	14 July 2023	28 July 2023
Q2	Jul, Aug, Sep	13 Oct 2023	27 Oct 2023
Q3	Oct, Nov, Dec	12 Jan 2024	26 Jan 2024
Q4	Jan, Feb, Mar	12 Apr 2024	26 April 2024

How to submit data

Submission is straightforward. Hospices are sent a unique set of links to secure online forms where the data can be submitted. The systems and processes surrounding the submission and reports are fully automated, so the timing and accuracy of hospice submissions is vital.

Each hospice is responsible for their data submission. Hospice UK treats an individual hospices' data with strict confidence.

Submission links are sent via email, or you can request a copy of the submission links.

How to join: Patient Safety project & network

Please join the Patient Safety project. We already have over 120 inpatient units submitting data to Hospice UK, but would ideally like to capture data from all UK hospices.

By joining our Patient Safety network you’ll be able to discuss the patient safety measures and ideas on how to improve patient safety.