NHS England has published a strategy detailing the primary care implementation of the NHS patient safety strategy, noting the role of digital and data in areas such as automatically flagging patient safety issues to support reliability, and supporting clinical decision-making by digitally embedding diagnosis advice and safety netting.
Looking firstly at safety culture, safety systems and inequalities, the strategy sets out a number of local commitments for ICBs and providers, including the need for ICBs to identify digital clinical safety officers responsible to help build understanding within general practice and provide a means for staff to raise and discuss any safety concerns. Additionally, ICBs should “provide effective digital and implementation support and training to primary care staff to enable benefits realisation”, and should seek to procure safe and inclusive digital products for general practice that meet quality assured standards.
A larger scale commitment for the national patient safety team includes promoting areas identified as priorities for digital decision support, and supporting the continuation of work on digital interoperability for primary care settings.
Moving on to explore involvement in patient safety and how organisations can support people to be directly involved in their own safety, a national commitment is shared to promote user-centred co-design of digital products to ensure that they are “highly usable and accessible” for patients and staff. NHSE also adds that ICBs should support training of general practice staff in areas such as triage and remote consulting, along with wider digital skills training.
The strategy goes on to highlight resources and best practice, drawing attention to the digital and online services requirements guidance published following the pandemic, designed to support GP practices in offering increased choice and flexibility to patients. On digital safety, the strategy highlights free training on the essentials of digital clinical safety for primary care staff.
Regarding procurement and development of services, NHSE points to the digital care services catalogue as a source for commissioners and providers to purchase from approved suppliers, and adds that the inclusive digital healthcare framework can be used when developing services to ensure that digital approaches are undertaken in an inclusive manner. Additionally, the strategy notes that digital clinical safety statutory duties, accountabilities and responsibilities are outlined in the GPIT operating model, the delivery of quality functions in ICSs and the digital clinical safety strategy.
For suppliers NHSE states the need to complete and regularly review clinical safety documents showing compliance with clinical risk management standard DCB0129, and to share these documents with the relevant ICB(s).
ICBs, meanwhile, should complete and regularly review documents indicating compliance with DCB0160; and NHSE encourages the involvement of general practice staff and patient groups in the digital tool procurement processes.
NHSE comments that the implementation of the NHS Staff Survey in primary care “will provide standardised, comparable, actionable staff experience data” to help understand challenges and make targeted improvements. A second pilot of this survey for general practice staff is expected to take place in October 2024, with the long-term aim for the survey to take place annually across primary care.
The strategy and further resources can be found in full here.
Spotlight on primary care
Last month HTN hosted a panel discussion focusing on innovation in primary care, with conversation covering what innovation in this space looks like, the role of digital in patient access, what ‘good’ looks like and more.
Another panel earlier in the year explored digital primary care including projects our panellists have been involved in and how they have tackled the challenges in this area; click here to read more.
We also sought reader views regarding where the biggest priority in digital primary care should lie – funding to support innovation, interoperability, patient-facing digital tools or back office efficiencies? Check out how the HTN audience voted here.
