In July 2021, NHS England and NHS Improvement rolled out a new national Learn From Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service. Since then, there has been a lot of conversation surrounding the topic and what the new system means for incident reporting, risk management, and patient safety.
As an LFPSE-compliant vendor, we’d like to help healthcare professionals better understand this new incident reporting system through a series of informative blog posts. We’ll cover the benefits, common concerns, best practices, implementation, timelines, and more.
For our first article, let’s discuss the basics — the 5 W’s of LFPSE.
1. What is LFPSE?
Replacing the current National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) and the Strategic Executive Information System (StEIS), LFPSE is a centralised system that healthcare staff can use to record patient safety events and access data and analytics about patient safety events nationwide using the NHS database. The system's goal is to encourage safety improvement and offer better support for providers from all health and care sectors.
2. Who is the LFPSE service for?
Unlike NRLS, which was originally designed for incident reporting in secondary care institutions, the LFPSE service can also be used by healthcare staff of all organisations registered with an ODS code. This includes primary care, general practice, community dentistry, and optometry.
Through an online LFPSE account, staff can record safety events where a patient was/could have been harmed, poor outcomes, risks to patient safety, and good care practices that could be learned from. However, if your organisation has an existing LRMS connected to LFPSE, then you can continue recording safety events through that system.
3. When is the deadline to report on LFPSE?
By the end of March 2023, providers currently reporting to NRLS must start the switch to LFPSE. This means that, at a minimum, they should implement a test version of the LFPSE-compliant LRMS they wish to use.
By September 30th 2023, all providers must fully transition to an LFPSE-compliant risk management system and stop submissions to the NRLS.
4. Why is LFPSE replacing NRLS?
The National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) was introduced roughly two decades ago to collect incident reports that compromised patient safety. Receiving data from healthcare providers nationwide, the NRLS also helped identify trends and patterns in patient care.
Since then, the NRLS has grown to a database of 20 million+ incident reports — an incredibly rich source of patient safety data, providing valuable insights for quality improvement in healthcare.
However, today, we need a better system — one that's rooted in technology and better represents the modern healthcare landscape and the culture of 'learning' from patient safety events. And thus, the LFPSE service was created.
LFPSE is designed to be infinitely better, transparent, more flexible, more accessible, and, most importantly, focused on learning. Using new technologies like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, LFPSE will allow healthcare staff to easily report incidents, access analytics related to patient safety events, and focus on organisation-wide quality improvement.
5. Where to start?
The first step is to contact your LRMS provider and check out their LFPSE implementation plans. You can also speak with new suppliers and evaluate your options. The complete list of compliant vendors can be found here.
MEG is an approved local risk management system (LRMS) vendor with a Patient Safety Learning module that is LFPSE-compliant and a key component of its QMS platform. MEG’s comprehensive, cloud-based tools are designed to streamline incident reporting and risk management for medium/large healthcare providers.
MEG's Incident & Risk Management software tools and experienced team can help your organisation chart the course to change. Harnesses powerful data insights to reduce risk and improve shared learnings as an organisation on our mobile app.