Medicine Safety Improvement Programme (MedSIP)

The Medicine Safety Improvement Programme (MedSIP), commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement as part of the Patient Safety Strategy, is in its third year. It aims to reduce severe avoidable medication related harm by 50% by 2024 (World Health Organisation Third Global Patient Safety Challenge).

Project overview

The programme has one primary objective:

1. Improve the care of people living with chronic pain in England by reducing harm from opioids. 

We are working with Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care System (ICS) with representatives from Dorset locality to define, develop, deliver, and measure a whole system programme which improves the care required to assist with people to ‘live well with pain’.   

The work will be underpinned by the principles of quality improvement, co-design and patient safety learning. The Opioid Medicines Patient Safety Network has been established to develop and implement the chosen interventions to improve care in Wessex. 

The Opioid Prescribing Comparators Dashboard 

In April 2021, Wessex commenced working with a group of local clinicians, and statisticians and data analysts from the NHSBSA to develop a small number of prescribing comparators to;

• support GP practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in understanding their opioid prescribing in relation to other PCNs and GP practices in England
• enable GP practices and PCNs to identify patients deemed to be at risk from harm from opioid prescribing for non-cancer pain. 
• enable GP practices and PCNs to identify patients who are receiving opioids in combination with other medicines known to increase the risk of harm. 

The comparators that will be available are 

• Overall opioid prescribing comparator. 
• Duration of opioid prescription comparator. 
• Opioid ‘plus’ comparators (other medicine(s) known to increase the risk of harm)
• Liquid morphine.

In October 2022, a second publication of the dashboard was released, using validated primary care prescribing data in ePACT2. It enables GP practices, PCNs, ICBs, NHS Regions and HINs to review trend data over time to see the impact of activities in this complex area of reducing harm from opioid prescribing.

If you are interested in learning more about the programme and the work we are doing, please do not hesitate to contact the Programme Manager by the link below. 

If you are interested in our other work relating to medicines, please visit the Health Innovation Wessex's Medicines Optimisation page