Healthcare Summit

Healthcare Summit meetings take place bi-annually to enable discussion between audit, inspection, regulation and improvement bodies.

They provide an interactive forum for sharing intelligence on the quality and safety of healthcare services provided by NHS Wales.

The anticipated outcomes are:

  • Closer working relationships and intelligence sharing between participating organisations
  • Work programmes of the participating organisations are informed by the shared intelligence and reflect a collective and collaborative approach to addressing areas of concern and/or for development
  • High risk, collective concerns, will be agreed and shared at each Summit meeting. The outcome of which may be used to form feedback to the Director General – Health and Social Services and NHS Wales Chief Executive and the appropriate Chief Executive by a summit attendee as appropriate
  • Proactive initiation of further assurance or action against concerns or issues using Welsh Government, Audit Wales, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales’ special enforcement powers or the Escalation and Intervention process where appropriate
  • Participating organisations cooperate and collaborate with peers and stakeholders as we play our respective roles in driving healthcare improvement in Wales.

Current participating organisations are:-

  • Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW)
  • Welsh Government – NHS Wales Performance and Escalation 
  • NHS Wales Executive – Performance and Assurance
  • NHS Wales Executive – Quality, Safety and Improvement
  • Health Education and Improvement Wales 
  • Audit Wales 
  • Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW)
  • Llais Wales
  • Public Services Ombudsman for Wales 
  • NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership - Welsh Risk Pool Service 
  • NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership - Audit and Assurance 
  • NHS Counter Fraud Service Wales
  • General Medical Council 
  • Nursing and Midwifery Council 
  • General Pharmaceutical Council 
  • The Health and Care Professions Council 

Extraordinary Summit

During 2021/22 initial work was undertaken to develop a way for healthcare regulators and improvement bodies in Wales to collaborate, and respond to significant patient safety concerns as they arise. This includes sharing intelligence when urgent risks and concerns arise outside the bi-annual Summit dates. This led to trialling an ‘Extraordinary Summit’ to bring partners together swiftly to share and triangulate specific concerns and risks, and agree robust and clear actions.

The purpose of the Extraordinary Summit is to provide a clear mechanism, for members of the Healthcare Summit to raise significant emerging patient safety issues and risks. The core principle for this work is to ensure relevant organisations can share and triangulate information in a nimble and timely manner, so as to respond to patient safety concerns.

The Extraordinary Summit meetings have a very different focus to the bi-annual Summits.

  • The bi-annual Summits are a retrospective summary review. This includes good practice and what has gone well, as well as risks and issues in each Health Board. The meetings are scheduled every six months and cover all Health Boards and Trusts in Wales.
  • The extraordinary meetings are triggered by one of the member organisations, on the emergence of a specific concern or risk. Meetings focus on sharing intelligence and insight, and on actions to be taken to mitigate risk, address issues, gain assurance and support improvement. The meetings are focused on specific issues (which may be local or national issues), and are trigged via a process based on patient safety risk exposure - the process is included in section four below.

Documents