Measurement and Monitoring of Safety

The Health Foundation has published a report,  The measurement and monitoring of safety.  It proposes a single framework with the following five dimensions, which the authors believe should be included in any safety and monitoring approach in order to give a comprehensive and rounded picture of an organisation’s safety:
  • Past harm: this encompasses both psychological and physical measures.
  • Reliability: this is defined as ‘failure free operation over time’ and applies to measures of behaviour, processes and systems.
  • Sensitivity to operations: the information and capacity to monitor safety on an hourly or daily basis.
  • Anticipation and preparedness: the ability to anticipate, and be prepared for, problems.
  • Integration and learning: the ability to respond to, and improve from, safety information.
You may also be interested in these Measurement for Quality and Cost Case Studies from the NHS Institute.
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