Radar Healthcare Achieves First LFPSE V6 Accreditation for Risk, Quality, and Compliance System
Radar Healthcare , a market leader in risk, quality, and compliance software, is proud to announce its latest milestone: becoming the first provider to gain NHS England accreditation for the LFPSE V6 framework.
Enhancing Patient Safety with LFPSE V6
Healthcare providers are always seeking ways to enhance patient care and safety. Successful implementation and execution of new frameworks, like Learning from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) is a crucial tool for achieving this.
In this article risk quality and compliance software provider, Radar Healthcare covers everything you need to know about LFPSE V6: what it is, its importance, best practices, and more.
What is LFPSE Taxonomy V6?
The LFPSE is a standardised framework designed to categorise and report patient safety incidents in healthcare settings. Its purpose is to facilitate better data collection, reporting, and analysis, which ultimately aims to improve patient outcomes and care quality.
Building on the current live version (LFPSE V5), LFPSE V6 serves as a significant improvement, enabling more efficient collection and submission of patient safety incidents to enhance patient outcomes.
What are some of the challenges to consider?
LFPSE Taxonomy V6 is designed to be compatible with most healthcare systems, but some integration challenges may still arise. Ensuring your current system supports the new taxonomy and safely transferring existing data to the new system are critical steps. Overcoming adoption challenges such as resistance to change can be managed through training and demonstrating the benefits, while technical issues require close collaboration with IT for a smooth implementation. Additionally, there are costs to consider, including purchasing or upgrading software to support the new taxonomy and investing in staff training and development programs.
Top tips for implementing LFPSE Taxonomy V6
Define your organisational goals first: Begin by aligning your internal objectives with the requirements of NHS England. Although there are established frameworks, it’s crucial to tailor incident report plans to address the specific risk factors of your local area. While LFPSE mandates the collection of certain key incident data, you must also identify and focus on key risk areas pertinent to your local context to meet national reporting standards effectively.
Assess your current systems and processes: Evaluate your existing incident reporting systems for compatibility with LFPSE V6. Consider whether your current systems can communicate with each other to prevent duplication. Ensure that your governance and incident reporting processes can meet the new standards effectively and efficiently. Remember that it is okay to re-evaluate and make necessary adjustments to maintain its effectiveness and compliance.
Train and support your workforce: It is important to provide comprehensive training for all relevant staff members on the new taxonomy and how to correctly fill in and submit the forms to ensure smooth adoption and efficient use.
Future-proof your strategy and system: Ensure that the processes and systems you implement for LFPSE V6 are flexible, scalable, and capable of adapting to future enhancements and changes. Consult with your current software provider and team to confirm this flexibility.
Utilise user feedback: Gather feedback from multiple stakeholders across your organisation. Adopting a user-centric approach ensures that the needs and experiences of end users are prioritised, leading to a more effective and user-friendly implementation.
Insights from LFPSE Champion Jack Forshaw on Radar Healthcare's LFPSE V6 Accreditation
Successfully navigating the transition to LFPSE V6 is essential for healthcare providers committed to enhancing patient safety and care quality. By understanding the challenges, setting clear goals, evaluating current systems, training staff, and incorporating user feedback, organisations can effectively implement this improved framework. Jack Forshaw, Project Manager Lead and LFPSE Champion at Radar Healthcare shares his expertise and experiences.
How did Radar Healthcare become the first accredited technology partner for LFPSE and again with the LFPSE V6?
As you mentioned, we were the first LFPSE testing supplier approved by NHS England. We worked closely with our partners, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, who were the first to integrate LFPSE into their service, to achieve this accolade.
Milton Keynes was our first implementation, and we learned a lot from it. When working with our other NHS partners, we decided to take a more consultative approach. This has worked well with the likes of Circle Health, Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust, and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, refining the process for consistency and efficiency across customers.
To achieve the V6 accreditation, once we received notification about the taxonomy changes and requirements, we assembled a skilled team from various parts of the business, including customer-facing representatives, API team members, and the development team. We reviewed the changes thoroughly and divided them into sub-teams to address different aspects.
In addition, we have a monthly LFPSE customer user group to showcase our progress and receive feedback. Any major updates, go-live dates, and new form additions are shared online in our LFPSE forum on the Radar Healthcare Community.
What role does user feedback play in developing and enhancing Radar Healthcare’s solutions, particularly in LFPSE?
We maintain constant communication with NHSE, as they're keen on all providers adopting the new framework for streamlined data access. User feedback is crucial, though our flexibility is limited by NHS LFPSE taxonomy. We continuously encourage our partners to give us direct feedback on all aspects of our product and service to better understand their concerns and needs. On our Community, we feature a suggestions box with upvoting capability. To date, 32% of all customer ideas on our forums have been implemented and a further 18% of ideas are confirmed as planned, demonstrating our commitment to customer input.
We gather feedback from customers on what worked and what didn't. Some suggestions, like dedicated weekly refinement sessions and expedited support availability during go-live, have already been implemented, while others are under review. This feedback loop primarily enhances implementation but also influences ongoing development efforts.
What were the key challenges you faced during the accreditation process, and how did you overcome them?
We've faced challenges with the LFPSE change documentation, which has been difficult to interpret. Many final changes we were making were not highlighted initially and only became apparent after testing and receiving feedback.
However, the process has been relatively smooth because we built upon our V5 form rather than starting from scratch. Our previous V5 accreditation and experience, including work with Milton Keynes, have been beneficial. This allowed us to develop best practices for V6 and will make the V6 rollout smoother. We'll backdate and upgrade existing users from V5, and new users will be onboarded directly to V6, which will be more efficient since we understand the system well and can help them integrate local questions.
What advice would you give to healthcare organisations just starting their journey with LFPSE V6?
The process isn't immediate because the taxonomy is prescribed, allowing no variation in content. Look for duplication to streamline processes and use this opportunity to review and align current practices. We focus on three main aspects: does it provide the needed data, is it easy for stakeholders to use, and is it manageable? Usability, simplicity, coding, and data output are crucial. As processes change, the system should remain meaningful and adaptable for both our support team and the client's team, ensuring usability.
It's important to get your internal risk strategy embedded first before focusing on national directives. When integrating local questions into the LFPSE taxonomy, it's less daunting to see it as integrating something known (local processes) into something prescribed (the taxonomy). This positive shift in perception helps manage the changes more effectively, as you're building on what you already understand rather than starting from scratch.
We emphasise that while the initial setup will be right, requirements will likely change within six months to a year. Instead of making constant adjustments, we recommend grouping changes together for a proper update every six months. This approach maintains continuity, reduces change fatigue, and results in more meaningful data and effective change management, as people aren't constantly dealing with shifting processes.
How does Radar Healthcare support organisations in training and engaging their staff with the new LFPSE V6 processes?
From a systems perspective, our Radar Healthcare Academy offers courses on our Events Module and sub-categories, allowing customers to proceed at their own pace. We require some training before module-specific kick-offs to ensure effective consultation. Customers can also request training files for integration into their own Learning Management Systems (LMS). Our training team provides customisable packages, including end-user and train-the-trainer sessions, addressing specific needs or weaknesses.
Can you share with us any future plans for Radar Healthcare and LFPSE?
Yes. This version is what we have been calling our 'vanilla' V6 form, which is V6 without additional features. The next iteration, possibly labelled V6.2, will introduce quality of life improvements within Radar Healthcare. This includes features like derived fields, where certain form questions can have preset values based on location or specialty. For instance, if an incident occurs in a hospital setting, the form could automatically default to 'hospital' for location, reducing user workload unless a specialized scenario requires adjustment. These enhancements aim to streamline processes and improve user experience. Looking ahead, future updates such as V7 will depend on evolving needs and feedback.
For more information on Radar Healthcare or LPFSE V6, please do get in touch with us.