Patient safety
Our guidelines make evidence based, best practice recommendations.
Our role
NICE evaluates new health technologies for NHS use, considering clinical effectiveness and value for money. We also produce useful and usable guidance, helping health and care practitioners deliver the best care.
Patient safety is integral to these processes to ensure proper regard for patient benefit and because adverse events associated with a drug, an intervention or a process of care reduces clinical effectiveness and increases costs.
The consideration of patient safety is an important part of our guidance development processes, and patient safety aspects are taken into account in the development of the full range of NICE guidance (clinical, social care, public health, or medicines practice guidelines; technology appraisals; guidance relating to interventional procedures, medical technologies, diagnostics, or highly specialised technologies).
Patient safety is also the responsibility of other organisations in the health care sector, and NICE works collaboratively to ensure that our recommendations do not conflict with others relating to patient safety, making our advice more useful and usable.
Patient Safety at NICE
Patient safety should be considered by everyone at NICE and at all stages of guidance development. However, NICE’s Patient Safety Oversight Group (PSOG) provides oversight of and, where required, coordination to patient safety related matters within NICE. It includes representation from all key guidance producing, implementation support and communication teams within NICE and is led by a Senior Responsible Officer for Patient Safety. PSOG was established in 2021 based on learning and recommendations from the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety (IMMDS) review.
PSOG routinely considers and provides input to respond to a range of patient safety signals including (but not limited to): intelligence captured from NICE’s engagement with the health and care system, national patient safety alerts, MHRA-issued drug safety updates, prevention of future death reports from coroners and investigation reports from organisations such as the Health Service Safety Investigation Branch. It works to ensure that safety is specifically considered in programmes promoting innovative technologies and using early-stage evidence.
Current priorities
To strengthen our contribution to patient safety, we will:
Continue to work with regulators and professional organisations to reinforce the use of our guidance and respond in a coordinated way to respond to arising patient safety concerns where appropriate.
Build relationships with key partners in the health and care system including: Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Care Quality Commission (CQC), Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB), NHS Resolution and Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations Programme (MNSI), to support the timely exchange of information important to promoting patient safety.
Work with Coroners and other stakeholders who submit safety recommendations to NICE for consideration.
Communicate to promote understanding of our role as a system partner in patient safety.
Contact us
For patient safety specific matters, you can contact the patient safety team at: patientsafety@nice.org.uk.
For general enquiries you should always contact the NICE enquiries team at: nice@nice.org.uk.