TY - JOUR T1 - Monitoring patient safety in general practice: the increasing role of GPs JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 398 LP - 399 DO - 10.3399/bjgp13X670499 VL - 63 IS - 613 AU - Sir Brian Jarman Y1 - 2013/08/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/63/613/398.abstract N2 - Patient safety has been defined1 as ‘a discipline in the healthcare sector that applies safety science methods toward the goal of achieving a trustworthy system of healthcare delivery. Patient safety is also an attribute of healthcare systems; it minimises the incidence and impact of, and maximises recovery from, adverse events’.GPs play a key role in health care in the UK: more so than in most other developed countries. From birth virtually the entire population is registered with their own general practice (often keeping to their own GP) and their medical notes travel with them ‘from cradle to the grave’ when they change practices. GPs refer non-emergency patients to hospital and receive discharge letters about their patients from hospitals so that, in theory, a record of much of a patient’s lifetime medical history resides in their general practice medical notes.Following the introduction of fundholding in 1991, then primary care trusts in 1998, and now, as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), GPs are responsible for commissioning about 60% of all NHS resources, which are allocated, using a formula developed for the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation, to CCGs. The allocation is to practices, aggregated to CCG level. With this increased financial power comes increased responsibility, outlined in the NHS England CCG Assurance Framework 2013/2014 which states that: ‘The framework is designed to give assurance that CCGs are delivering quality and outcomes for patients, both locally and as part of … ER -