RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 National statutory reporting: not even ticking the boxes? The quality of ‘Learning from Deaths’ reporting in quality accounts within the NHS in England 2017–2020
JF BMJ Open Quality
JO BMJ Open Qual
FD British Medical Journal Publishing Group
SP e002092
DO 10.1136/bmjoq-2022-002092
VO 12
IS 1
A1 Zoe Brummell
A1 Dorit Braun
A1 Zainab Hussein
A1 S Ramani Moonesinghe
A1 Cecilia Vindrola-Padros
YR 2023
UL http://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/content/12/1/e002092.abstract
AB Introduction Regulation through statutory reporting is used in healthcare internationally to improve accountability, quality of care and patient safety. Since 2017, within the National Health Service (NHS) in England, NHS Secondary Care Trusts (NSCTs) are legally required to report annually both quantitative and qualitative information related to patient deaths within their care within their publicly available Quality Accounts as part of a countrywide patient safety programme: The Learning from Deaths (LfDs) programme.Method All LfDs reports published between 2017 (programme inception) and 2020 were reviewed and evaluated through a critical realist lens, quantitatively reported using descriptive statistics and qualitatively using reflexive thematic analysis.Results In 2017/2018, 44% of NSCTs reported all six statutory elements of the LfDs reporting regulations, in 2019/2020 35% of NSCTs were reporting this information. A small number of NSCTs did not report any parts of the LfDs regulatory requirements between 2017 and 2020. Multiple qualitative themes arose from this study suggesting problematic engagement with the LfDs programme, erroneous reporting accuracy and errors in written communication.Conclusions The LfDs programme has, to some extent, reduced variation and improved consistency to the way that NSCTs identify, report and investigate deaths. However, 3 years into the LfDs programme, the majority of NSCTs are not reporting as required by law. This makes the validity of National statutory reporting in Quality Accounts within the NHS in England questionable as a regulatory process.Data are available in a public, open access repository. All data used in this study are publicly available from NHS Secondary Care Trusts Quality Accounts. The dataset for this research came from NHS Trust Quality Accounts (QA), which are publicly available documents, found on NHS Trust websites and referenced within the paper itself. In some instances it may be necessary to write to the NHS trust to ask for the QA where it can not be found (or is no longer available) on the trust website.I have provided links for NHS Trusts Quality Accounts in online supplementl information. As far as we are aware, there are no conditions of reuse.