Measuring Severe Harm
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing methods for assessing avoidable severe harm attributable to problems in care
IRAS ID
193267
Contact name
Helen Hogan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
There is a substantial public and policy interest in the safety of hospital care. Recent studies using retrospective case record reviews (RCRR) have demonstrated that a proportion of hospital deaths are avoidable. However, the amount of (severe) harm caused by health care may reflect a greater quality of care problem.\nWe will first draw up a list of the types of severe harm that occur based on previous research, information from routine reports to the NHS National Reporting and Learning System and the opinions of clinical experts and\npatients.\nNext, we will develop ways of using existing routine health and social care databases to identify those patients\nwho suffer severe harm as a result of their hospital in-patient care.\nFinally we will develop and test how we can determine which of these incidents of severe harm was due to poor quality care and could, therefore, have been avoided. This will be done by detailed review of the patients’ case records by experienced doctors trained to undertake this task. This will also provide information on the hospital factors that contributed to the event.\nIt is expected that this research will guide NHS England in their approach to monitoring severe harm in health care and complement the emerging measure of avoidable hospital mortality (section 5c NHS Outcomes Framework 2014/15).
REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NW/0941
Date of REC Opinion
15 Dec 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion