In July 2021, NHS England rolled out the national Learn From Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service — a centralised system that healthcare staff can use to record and access information related to patient safety events nationwide using the NHS database.
As an LFPSE-compliant vendor, we’re writing a series of blog posts to help healthcare professionals better understand this new incident reporting system. You can check out our previous articles here:
#1 The Five W’s of LFPSE — The New Incident Reporting System in the UK.
#2 Lucie Mussett - LFPSE Project Lead at NHS England Breaks Down the New Incident Recording System
In this piece, we’ve highlighted 5 factors one must evaluate when choosing an LFPSE-compliant incident reporting software. We also walk you through MEG’s Patient Safety module and explain why our solution is a cut above the rest.
1. Interface:
When we interviewed Marcos Manhaes, the Head of Patient Safety Incident Reporting at NHS England and Improvement about LFPSE, he emphasised the importance of placing user experience at the heart of designing an incident recording system, and we couldn't agree more.
One of the key contributors to underreporting is simply a complex reporting system. According to statistics, the average nurse-to-patient ratio can range between 1:2 to 1:6, depending on factors like geographic location, department, or unit. And so, the typical nurse or healthcare worker just doesn't have the time to spare on filing an incident on a clunky, hard-to-use system.
On the other hand, a user-friendly interface, designed keeping the end-user experience in mind, encourages accurate and increased incident reporting, lowers stress levels, and improves productivity.
How MEG does it:
MEG's LFPSE-compliant Incident Reporting System is designed with a focus on the unique needs and challenges of the healthcare system. With a minimal, intuitive interface and smart expandable forms, uploading information to the LFPSE database in real time takes mere minutes.
We also provide complete customisation of the forms to make them work for you. Want to switch out the order of the questions? Or perhaps replace the help text/labels of your LFPSE form with terminology that's more specific, relevant, or meaningful to your organisation? We can do all of that, no problem!
2. Accessibility:
One of the key improvements of the LFPSE service over the legacy NRLS is the ability to report and access patient safety data in real-time. While this is an exciting and beneficial feature, it also means that the LRMS your organisation uses should be able to support this. And that's where accessibility comes in.
An accessible incident reporting system, readily available to all healthcare professionals within your organisation, allows your staff to record incidents easily and accurately, in turn, leading to the prevention of further harm and better patient outcomes.
How MEG does it:
MEG's cloud-based Incident Reporting and Patient Safety module can be accessed anytime, anywhere — no exceptions.
We understand that healthcare workers are constantly on the move, and they need a system that can keep up. That's why we created the MEG Mobile app that allows you to report and access data on the go. The best part? It works even if you have little to no cellular connectivity. You can collect important patient safety data and simply upload it later to the system when connectivity returns.
Our mobile app also allows you to take photos, record audio, add signatures, attach files, and more through simple swipes or clicks. Smart notifications, automated alert workflows, and an internal communication platform are some more features that make MEG a state-of-the-art, accessible incident reporting system.
At MEG, we are thrilled to be part of the journey towards improving patient safety through our LFPSE-compliant Patient Safety Learning module. This is a testament to our commitment to delivering innovative, technology-driven solutions to the healthcare industry.
Kerrill Thornhill, CEO
3. Incident Classification:
Another new feature introduced in the LFPSE service is the classification of patient safety events into four categories: Incident, Risk, Good Care, and Outcomes, allowing for better and more accurate data collection.
This classification helps prioritise incidents based on their severity, impact, and urgency, in turn, enabling organisations to allocate resources and respond to incidents accordingly. It also allows for trend analysis, identifying recurrent issues and root causes, and developing preventative measures.
How MEG does it:
At this point in time, according to NHS England, providers must use the "Incident" and "Good Care" event types but have the option to refrain from using "Risk" and "Outcomes" if they wish to do so. While most LRMS vendors haven't added the optional event categories to their LFPSE-compliant incident reporting systems, we have.
MEG is fully LFPSE-compliant, meaning we support all four event types. This is simply to encourage organisations that want to document risks and outcomes to do so using our LRMS.
While the LFPSE forms are standardised across England, hospitals often have their own incident-related KPIs and performance areas they'd also like to monitor. MEG makes this possible.
We believe there's no such thing as 'too much data'. And that's why we offer our clients the option to add additional questions to their LFPSE forms in MEG if they wish to. While this extra data won't be sent to the central LFPSE system as it only accepts data used in its schema, they can still gain valuable insights from the data collected using their local incident reporting dashboards.
This way, they can serve both the LFPSE obligations and still meet local reporting requirements within their organisation. It’s a win-win!
"At the end of the day, every client has unique needs and preferences. MEG’s LFPSE forms are highly configurable, allowing us to cater to those specific requirements, ultimately enhancing customers' experience and satisfaction with our product."
Gayle Hearne, Business Development Manager
4. Integration:
Integration with other systems is one of the key features of a healthcare incident reporting software for several reasons.
Firstly, it allows the different systems to talk to each other and share valuable data, ultimately helping healthcare professionals gain complete visibility and understanding of a patient safety event. It also helps streamline incident reporting workflows, support quality improvement, improve data analytics capabilities, boost compliance, and lead to better patient outcomes.
How MEG does it:
MEG's "all-in-one" platform offers seamless integration with third-party systems and our own tools and modules, including policy management, audit and compliance management, patient experience and complaints management, staff training, and analytics reporting. This integration allows for reported patient events to be transformed into valuable learning opportunities, driving improvements across the organisation.
All of these functions are managed through one intuitive software application, making MEG a highly effective solution for NHS healthcare providers. But that's not all.
MEG's integration with LFPSE is designed in such a way that the forms will be auto-updated every time the API developers add new questions, help text, labels, or fields. You don't ever have to update the system manually. Our LFPSE implementation is also highly flexible and is future-proofed for the new versions of the LFPSE API, including v6, that will come out later this year!
We've engineered our LFPSE-compliant incident reporting system for smooth integration with our other quality management modules, including risk management, auditing, MEGDocs, and insights. This interconnected data along with smart alerts from the insights module offers immense potential to drive substantial enhancements and growth within an organisation.
David Scully, Product Manager
5. Reporting:
In the words of Lucie Mussett, the Senior Product Owner and Lead for LFPSE at NHS England, "While data in is great and fulfils some needs, data out is where the real capacity for change and learning happens."
One of the key objectives of the LFPSE service is to take the patient safety data recorded into the system, generate valuable insights, and share that information with healthcare workers nationwide through NHS England's Data Access app. Staff can access data in real-time, create custom reports, and use them in quality improvement work within their organisation.
However, in addition to this, your local incident and risk management system should also have reporting and analytical capabilities. This has many benefits, including the ability to identify patterns and trends in patient safety, monitor and compare performance through key performance indicators, and promote a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
How MEG does it:
MEG provides elaborate and customisable reporting dashboards to monitor progress against KPIs. You can understand the status of complaints, view the number of open, closed, and unallocated tasks, set threshold target alerts, and more.
You can also slice and dice any data in MEG's system for thorough analysis. We have dozens of standard reports that are available within our LFPSE-compliant incident reporting system that our current customers use to gain access to invaluable data. We can also build custom reports to fit your exact requirements, whether that's for trend analysis, stakeholder communication, or literally anything else!
We wanted our LFPSE integration to not only be fully compliant with all four incident types, but also integrated into MEG's entire quality management system so our LFPSE customers could benefit from the amazing functionality we've already built into our platform. This makes MEG's LFPSE-compliant incident reporting system a game-changer for healthcare providers in the UK.
Mark O Reilly, Chief Information Officer
MEG’s Patient Safety Learning Module: Making An Impact, One Organisation At A Time
Our Patient Safety Module provides Incident and Risk Management tools for healthcare workers with a learning mindset. We're already making an impact in hospitals and healthcare systems around the world. With our new LFPSE-compliant integration, NHS organisations - large and small - now have a credible alternative to their incumbent Incident Reporting & Risk Management Systems.
Don't believe us? See for yourself.