Helping to ensure best practice in the NHS

12 July 2004 - The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), the Special Health Authority created to help the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales to learn from problems affecting the safety of NHS patients, has selected SAS UK, the leader in business intelligence, to provide comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the data collected by its advanced incident reporting system, the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS). Patient safety-related information from other NHS reporting systems will be included in the analysis.

With an estimated 900,000 patient safety incidents occurring in the NHS each year, there is a need to identify problem areas and promote best practice across all areas and care settings of the NHS. The new NRLS depends on a culture of incident reporting being fostered by local NHS organisations, NHS staff, patients and carers across both countries.

Using SAS analytics, the NPSA can analyse data on each patient safety incident to identify connections between them. The system allows the NPSA to use modelling to highlight areas in which similar incidents have occurred, and to identify scenarios that should be avoided, minimising patient risk. The insights and knowledge developed through the use of this system will be used to develop best practice solutions and shared across the NHS so that patient safety can be improved and lives can be saved.

Susan Williams, Joint Chief Executive of the NPSA, said: "The NPSA's success depends on identifying ways of achieving tangible patient safety improvements. To do this we need detailed analysis of the data we receive from all staff across the health service so that we can build a clearer picture of the issues affecting patient safety in England and Wales. SAS is key to the process as it is helping us to dramatically reduce both the time and cost of identifying related incidents, as well as providing us with a level of analysis we previously did not have. We believe that as the results of our analysis are implemented and reporting rises, the number of serious incidents will begin to decline."

Andy Cooke, Director, Public Sector Division, SAS UK said: "From its inception nearly three decades ago, SAS has always had a close working relationship with the healthcare industry, understanding its unique needs and providing powerful data management and analytic software to help the industry better understand the huge amounts of data it generates. The work we are carrying out with the NPSA will ultimately touch every one of us in some way, and SAS is proud to be contributing to such a ground-breaking new approach."

Initially, users will be internal statisticians and analysts at the NPSA. However, the NPSA is already planning a further release customising SAS' easy-to-use interface to allow non-statisticians at the NPSA access to SAS' intuitive yet powerful analytical tools.

About SAS
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