NHS Safety Thermometer: Patient-Level Harm-Free Care Data

Anonymized patient-level data from the NHS Safety Thermometer, a national tool for measuring and monitoring patient harms. The dataset is managed by NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit on behalf of NHS Improvement and is published in rolling twelve-month periods. Files require Microsoft Excel 2007 or later and are available under the OGL-UK-3.0 license.

Use Cases

• Monitor trends in patient harms over time based on the rolling twelve-month data collection.
• Analyze the prevalence of 'harm-free' care episodes across different NHS providers.
• Support local improvement initiatives by benchmarking safety metrics described in the tool's purpose.

Strengths

• Data is explicitly anonymized, containing no identifiable patient information.
• Managed and published by an official NHS commissioning support unit, suggesting institutional oversight.
• Available under the permissive OGL-UK-3.0 license for reuse.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analysis.
• Data freshness should be verified as the last metadata update is dated 2026-07-08.

Provenance

Source

NHS Digital (via NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit)

Collection Method

Collected via the NHS Safety Thermometer, a local improvement tool for measuring patient harms.

Time Range

Rolling twelve-month periods.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:08.645427; published in rolling twelve-month periods.

Geography

United Kingdom (National Health Service)