Open and Honest Reporting

What this data shows:

This indicator combines several other indicators to give an overall picture of whether the hospital has a good patient safety incident reporting culture. A good reporting culture in an organisation means that the organisation reports patient safety incidents frequently, reports the more serious incidents that occur but also reports many incidents involving low and no harm to patients, because its staff understand that by reporting even these less serious incidents, the organisation can learn and improve. A good reporting culture is also indicated by the staff of a hospital saying they think the organisation has fair and effective procedures when incidents are reported.

This combined (composite) indicator is constructed from the patient safety incident reporting and response indicators produced by the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) and NHS Staff Survey. Detailed descriptions of how these indicators are calculated can be found on the Care Quality Commission's website http://www.cqc.org.uk/content/monitoring-nhs-acute-hospitals

How the data is gathered:

The indicators which are combined to a single overall rating for Open and Honest Reporting are:  

• potential under-reporting of patient safety incidents as suggested by organisations who are reporting significantly fewer patient safety incidents than other organisations (‘at risk’ or ‘at elevated risk’ are rated poor, otherwise good); • potential under-reporting of patient safety incidents causing death and severe harm as suggested by organisations who are reporting significantly fewer of these kinds of incidents than other organisations (‘at risk’ or ‘at elevated risk’ are rated poor, otherwise good); • potential under-reporting of patient safety incidents involving no harm as suggested by organisations who report a significantly higher proportion of incidents involving harm than other organisations (‘at risk’ or ‘at elevated risk’  are rated poor, otherwise good); • organisational commitment to monthly reporting of incidents to the National Reporting and Learning System, with organisations that submit every month rated good, those that do not submit one or two months are 'at risk' and rated OK, and those that do not submit three or more months are 'at elevated risk' and rated poor;• the percentage of staff who report their organisations’ procedures and responses to incident reports are fair and effective; where a hospital has significantly lower scores than other organisations (‘at risk’ or ‘at elevated risk’) this is poor, the top 20% of organisations, are good, or the middle which is OK.

This is a chance to highlight if there are expectations in this data capture.

More information about the data source:

These indicators are combined to give an overall rating for Open and Honest Reporting:• Any poor (red) indicator will result in a poor (red) rating for Open and Honest Reporting.• An organisation with no poor (red) indicators and 1 good (green) indicator will have a good (green) rating for Open and Honest Reporting• All other organisations will be ok (blue)

The rating does not describe whether a hospital is safe, but does give an indication on how well developed the organisation’s patient safety incident reporting culture is.

Data Source:

National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) Organisation patient safety incident reports (NHS Improvement) and NHS Staff Survey. Indicator calculated by NHS Digital

Data Period:

NRLS: 6 monthly 01/10/2015 to 31/03/2016 / NHS Staff Survey: Annual 01/01/2015 to 31/12/2015

Further Information:

https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/organisation-patient-safety-incident-reports-data/ http://www.nhsstaffsurveys.com/