Introducing LFPSE

The Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service is a national NHS system for the recording and analysis of patient safety events that occur in healthcare. The service introduces a range of innovations to support the NHS to improve learning from the over 2.5 million patient safety events recorded each year, to help make care safer (see ‘How LFPSE will improve patient safety learning’).

LFPSE is now in use across the NHS, and organisations have switched to recording patient safety events onto the new LFPSE service using LFPSE-compliant local systems, rather than the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS), which will be decommissioned on 30 June 2024. The Strategic Executive Information System (StEIS) is still in use while the next version of LFPSE is rolled out to replace it – see here for specific guidance.

Organisations without a LRMS (typically private primary care providers, such as GP, dental and optometry practices and community pharmacies) are asked to record patient safety events directly onto LFPSE by registering for an account and using the online Learn From Patient Safety Events service. To support local safety governance, response and improvement, this online service offers users the ability to assign relevant individuals access to data on all safety events recorded within their organisation, and to complete statutory and national policy requirements as necessary. Relevant staff within Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and Regional teams can request read-only access to data submitted by providers within their areas, to enable their remit for patient safety oversight and offer support to provider organisations.

This web page provides information on the different types of LFPSE accounts, and who should use them.

Also see our ‘Primary care information on the new national learn from patient safety events service’ webpage.

What services does LFPSE provide

LFPSE initially provides two main services:

1. Record a patient safety event – organisations, staff and patients will be able to record the details of patient safety events, contributing to a national NHS wide data source to support learning and improvement.

2. Access data about recorded patient safety events – providers and commissioners can access data that has been submitted by their teams, in order to better understand their local recording practices and culture, and to support local safety improvement work.

• Use the Recorded data dashboard

The LFPSE service is currently in a public-beta stage and will continue to grow and evolve in response to user feedback. More tools will be added over time. If you would like to be involved in future LFPSE user research, please get in touch with the patient safety helpdesk for more information.

How recording safety events supports patient safety

Recording patient safety events, whether they result in harm or not, provides vital insight into what can go wrong in healthcare and the reasons why.

At a national level, this allows for new or under-recognised safety issues to be quickly identified and acted upon on an NHS-wide scale, ensuring providers across the country take action to reduce the risk (find out more about how we use patient safety incident recording at a national level).

It also provides a wealth of data offering essential insight to support ongoing national patient safety improvement programmes, as well as improvement work at a more local or speciality-specific level.

How LFPSE will improve patient safety learning

The LFPSE service is a major upgrade from the old system, creating a single national NHS system for recording patient safety events. It introduces improved capabilities for the analysis of patient safety events occurring across healthcare, and enables better use of the latest technology, such as machine learning, to create outputs that offer a greater depth of insight and learning that are more relevant to the current NHS environment.

When fully functional, LFPSE will:

• make it easier for staff across all healthcare settings to record safety events, with automated uploads from local systems to save time and effort, and introducing new tools for non-hospital care where reporting levels have historically been lower
• collect information that is better suited to learning for improvement than what is currently gathered by existing systems
• make data on safety events easier to access, to support local and specialty-specific improvement work
• utilise new technology to support higher quality and more timely data, machine learning, and provide better feedback for staff and organisations.

Around three quarters of recording to the NRLS and StEIS was from the hospital sector. LFPSE will make recording safety events easier in other care settings, including primary care, through the introduction of simple online forms, and a multi-functional online service to access, review and update previously recorded incidents. This supports good incident response practice, by allowing smaller organisations to see all their safety events through one dashboard, and to continuously improve their data quality over time.

Introducing the Learn from Patient Safety Events service video

Developing the LFPSE service

LFPSE has been developed with staff from all health and care settings, following best-practice agile development methodology, and adheres to the Government digital service standard. This means that design decisions are made around how best to meet specific user needs. It also means the service is developed one step at a time, so different functions will become available at different points.

LFPSE now and in the future

LRMS suppliers have rolled out a programme of upgrades moving organisations onto products that are compatible and compliant with the LFPSE service, supporting two-way communication between local and national systems, and allowing automated data sharing.

They will continue to deliver updates in line with LFPSE developments, including to make the next version of the service – which includes fields to support the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) – available. Different vendors will have different timelines for offering this, so providers should contact their LRMS supplier for further details.

We have a web page providing a list of LRMS vendors who have achieved LFPSE compliance who are able to offer LFPSE-compatible products, and which versions they support.

The online service uses the most up-to-date version the LFPSE software.

Upcoming additional functionality

To continue to meet identified user needs, new functionality will be added to the service as it is developed. This will include:

• enhanced tools for accessing and visualising data, for the public, providers and national bodies
• new feedback mechanisms and enhanced learning outputs
• work to understand how best to ensure patients, carers and families can contribute to national learning –  read more about this. The Patient eForm will remain available for use until the new service is fully developed.

Ongoing user research will take place throughout, to also identify any new needs for future developments.

LFPSE podcasts

To provide further information about LFPSE and support organisations using the service, we have produced a series of podcasts.

You can listen to our latest LFPSE podcasts via the links below:

• LFPSE and the NHS Patient Safety Strategy – in discussion with national director of patient safety
• Steps to getting connected to LFPSE – in discussion with the NHS England reporting leads
• Learning from transitioned providers – adopting the LFPSE service in a mental health trust
• Learning from transitioned providers – adopting the LFPSE service in an acute trust
• Machine learning and LFPSE – revolutionising how we learn from patient safety events

Accessing data recorded to the LFPSE service

Providers sharing details of patient safety events with LFPSE can access their own data at record level, through their LRMS or the online service. There is also a data access function for viewing aggregate data recorded to the LFPSE service. This includes tools for simple online visualisations of the data and will be developed with any other needs identified in our ongoing research.

Over time, we will develop self-service tools to support routine and ad hoc analysis of national LFPSE data, in line with our agenda of transparency, and to facilitate more opportunities to derive improvement insight from the information we hold, and to share learning outputs across the NHS.

Find out more

More information about the project is available in our frequently asked questions.

For further information about LFPSE and the Beta service you can also view a PSIMS show and tell video recorded in July 2020, or access more detailed information and documentation on the LFPSE pages of the FutureNHS platform.