Patient Safety Collaborative

The East Midlands Patient Safety Collaborative sits within Health Innovation East Midlands. It delivers the National Patient Safety Improvement Programmes (SIPs) within the region.

The SIPs are a key part of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, and collectively they form the largest safety initiative in the history of the NHS.

They aim to continually reduce error, harm and death as a result of failures in the system so the NHS becomes comparable with the safest health care services in the world. 

The diagram below summarises the priority areas for 2026-2027.

 

 

We also produce a regular patient safety newsletter as well as a summary of our patient safety work twice a year:

• June 2026
• December 2025 
• June 2025

You can find out more about each one by clicking the links below:

Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme (MatNeoSIP)

Improving safety for women and babies through programmes on preterm birth, deterioration, and avoiding brain injuries in childbirth.

Medicines Safety Improvement Programme (MedSIP)

Helping people with a learning disability to reduce harm from psychotropic medicines through a whole‑system approach.

System Safety Improvement Programme 

Supporting effective implementation of the Patient Safety Improvement Framework (PSIRF) across systems, including in primary care.

Managing Deterioration Programme

Improving early recognition and response to deterioration, including delivery of Martha’s Rule.

 

Local Safety Improvement Programmes 

In addition to national programmes, HIEM delivers locally commissioned work to improve outcomes for our local populations. 

Mental Health

Reduce the incidence of restrictive practice, improve sexual safety and reduce suicide and self-harm in inpatient mental health, learning disabilities and autism wards. 

Transforming Wound Care  

Ensuring patients with lower limb wounds receive evidence-based care improving the healing of wounds, quality of life and reducing the likelihood of wound recurrence. 

Polypharmacy  

Supporting health care professionals across all East Midlands ICSs to identify patients at potential risk from problematic polypharmacy and facilitate better conversations about medicines.

 

How we work

The overall improvement approach of HIEM is underpinned by evidence-based improvement methodology, robust programme management and application of safety enablers across all programmes. 

HIEM is committed to improving patient safety across the region by: 

• Establishing regional networks and system-wide partnerships to drive patient safety improvement. 
• Creating safer systems of care that reflect continuous learning and improvement. 
• Supporting the reduction of avoidable harm and variations in safe care delivery through the programmes of work across the East Midlands. 
• Creating the conditions for a culture of safety to flourish across organisations we work with. 
• Extracting learning from both errors and excellence to inform our work. 
• Sharing improvement learning with a view to national scale-up and adoption. 
• Involving people with lived experience to provide insight, define our focus and shape delivery through co-design. 
• Developing system-level improvement leaders to support the delivery and sustainability of programmes. 
• Safety culture and human factors. 
• Improvement leadership, quality improvement methodology, and coaching.  

Further information can be found on the National Patient Safety Improvement Programme web page. 

If you would like to get involved with any aspect of PSC work, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..