Current status: Answered by Shona Robison on 16 December 2016
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on establishing an independent investigations body, similar to the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch in NHS England and Wales, to examine incidents in the NHS.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland is responsible for scrutinising healthcare providers in Scotland to provide public assurance about the quality and safety of the care being delivered and for supporting those organisations to deliver high quality, evidence based, safe, effective and person-centred care. The Scottish Government does not consider there is a need to change these arrangements at this time.
In collaboration with NHS boards, HIS has led on the development of the national approach to learning from adverse events and is driving implementation through an improvement support programme. However, individual care providers are responsible and accountable for effectively managing adverse events. All organisations should have a management system for reporting, reviewing and learning from all types of adverse events. This includes clinical events involving patients, families, staff and carers (including health and safety, accidents or incidents) and non-clinical events (including information governance, health and safety at work and finance). This is a developing process and is under constant review.
The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) was established by the UK Government to investigate the most serious risks to patient safety across the NHS in England. HSIB is part of NHS Improvement and has a similar status and, when fully operational, will carry out a similar role to the investigations and inspections undertaken by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS).