Norway Leads World In Patient Safety - UK Ranks 21st
A new report on patient safety shows that Norway ranks number one out of 38 OECD countries, while the UK is in 21st place.
The Global State of Patient Safety 2025 from the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and Patient Safety Watch will be launched by Health Secretary Wes Streeting MP and former Health Secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt MP at the House of Lords tonight [29 January 2026].
This is the second report in the series, with the first published in 2023. The ranking assessed the 38 countries using the same four measures as in 2023:
Analysis of more than 100 patient safety indicators found that, globally:
The report highlights some key insights for the UK:
Since the 2023 report, few countries have moved significantly in the rankings, suggesting that meaningful change in patient safety takes time. The value of the data lies, say the authors, not in ranking for its own sake, but in revealing where further inquiry and action on patient safety is required.
The report considers four countries (Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway) - showcased in the report - whose patient safety approaches highlight valuable learning for other countries.
The report builds on the recommendations made in the 2023 report, arguing for:
It also consolidates the learning from other countries into 16 ambitions for safer healthcare systems, covering four key areas: strategy and governance, implementation and learning, involvement and capability, and data and measurement.
Accompanying the report is an interactive patient safety dashboard. With 108 indicators from 209 countries over 25 years, it provides a central hub for the latest global patient safety data.
Professor Bryony Dean Franklin, Director of the NIHR North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, and one of the report's authors, says: "It is imperative that we tackle care deficiencies now to prevent patient safety risks later. Patient safety is everyone's responsibility, and our report suggests how healthcare teams in one part of the system can support safety in another.
"As healthcare professionals, there is much more we can - and must - do to foster multi-disciplinary teamworking and cross-sector collaboration to improve patient safety."
Sir Jeremy Hunt, former health secretary, and chair of Patient Safety Watch added: "Tens of thousands of lives could be saved every year if the UK matched the patient safety performance of the world's best health systems, according to this report.
"For example, if the UK had mirrored Switzerland's rate for treatable mortality, over 22,000 deaths could have been avoided in a single year. That's a toll that demands urgent national attention and action."
James Titcombe OBE, chief executive of Patient Safety Watch, and one of the report's authors, added:"Behind every statistic in this report is a person who should still be alive, and a family whose lives have been permanently changed. The gap between where the UK is on patient safety and where we could be - if we matched the best performing health system - represents around 22,000 lives every year. That's 60 lives every day.
"But the harm does not stop there. Preventable failures in care send ripples of suffering through families, communities and the NHS workforce, traumatising staff, undermining trust, and diverting scarce time and resources away from caring for patients and towards dealing with the consequences of avoidable harm.
"Closing this gap must now be an urgent national priority. Improving patient safety in the NHS is not optional - it is fundamental to saving lives, supporting staff, and restoring confidence in the health service."
Lord Darzi, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, and another of the report's authors noted: "It will take sustained effort to improve the UK's patient safety performance, given the state of the NHS I set out in my investigation. But the message of this report is clear: the safety gap is measurable, and therefore fixable.
"This report also shows where we can make rapid progress - reducing surgical complications, reducing avoidable deaths, and learning systematically from the countries that lead. Better data, stronger governance, and patients as partners are the foundations of safer care."
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Citation: Illingworth J, Batchelor S, Khalsa I, Leis M, Howitt P, Titcombe J, Durkin M, Darzi A, Franklin BD. Global State of Patient Safety 2025. Imperial College London (2026).
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/articles/global-health-innovation/2026/norway-leads-the-world-in-patient-safety--the-uk-ranks-21st-/
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