The HFEA's monthly newsletter for clinic staff |
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| There's still time left to complete the HFEA National Patient Survey! |
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Our National Patient Survey is still open, and your patients can play a pivotal role in sharing their views.
The HFEA carries out a survey every three years exploring the patient experience, from accessing GP services through to patients’ most recent fertility treatment. This helps us identify how the experience of fertility treatment in the UK has changed.
Our survey is open for patients, surrogates and intended parents through surrogacy that are undergoing treatment, or who have had treatment in the last five years.
Please share this link, or the QR code below with your patients. |
Communicating licensing, regulatory activity and incident information |
Peter Thompson, HFEA Chief Executive, has written to all PRs to let them know about some changes that will take place to the information the HFEA makes available publicly in relation to licensing, regulatory activity and incident information.
The HFEA website holds information on individual pages for each licensed clinic. On these Choose a Fertility Clinic (CaFC) pages we publish minutes of relevant licensing committee meetings, including inspection reports, as well as other information such as patients’ ratings and success rates. Most of the information on the clinic CaFC pages is generated by the HFEA, but some of this information can be updated by the clinic such as donor waiting times or parking information.
Over the past few years, the Authority has been discussing how our regulatory decisions could be made more accessible to the public, and in particular patients, as committee minutes and inspection reports are written to meet formal governance and regulatory requirements and not specifically for a patient audience. The Authority discussed this in May 2021 and November 2021.
We have continued to look at how regulatory information and decisions can be made more easily available to patients and the wider public, and the Authority agreed a number of actions at the meeting on 25 September 2024. Papers from the meeting are available on the HFEA website. From now on the following will happen: -
When the HFEA Licence Committee suspends or revokes a clinic licence, or adds additional conditions, a summary of the decision will be made public through a news release; social media posts; and information on the clinic’s CaFC pages. This includes removing the rating for the duration of the suspension to avoid causing confusion for patients. The PR and Licence Holder would always be notified about the decision beforehand.
- Information about licensing decisions will be made more easily available to the public. You can see a rough mock up of how this might look on page 50 of the Authority papers here.
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Details of incidents by type (e.g. administrative, clinical, laboratory) and grade by clinic will be published as part of the underlying data set with the annual State of the Fertility Sector report – the 2023/24 State of the Fertility Sector report will be published 1 October 2024 and will be available to read on our website. We publish underlying data sets as part of our reports and these remain on the HFEA website with the relevant publications.
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- Alert 2024/12 – Field Safety Notice: Siemens Healthineers ACUSON Juniper and ACUSON Maple Ultrasound systems
Alert 2024/12 was issued on 29 August 2024 -
Alert 2024/13 – Customer Safety Information (CSI) for Field Safety Corrective Action: Siemens Healthineers Cios VA30 Systems
Alert 2024/13 was issued on 29 August 2024 - Alert 2024/14 – Field Safety Notice: Siemens Healthineers ACUSON Redwood Ultrasound system
Alert 2024/14 was issued on 6 September 2024 - Alert 2024/15 – Class 3 Medicines Recall: Theramex HQ UK Ltd, Evorel Sequi, EL (24)A/41
Alert 2024/15 was issued on 12 September 2024
If the PR at your clinic did not receive these alerts via email, please contact Business Support at HFEACompliance@HFEA.gov.uk to update your contact details. Please also make sure that the email address alerts are sent from, alert@hfea.gov.uk, has been whitelisted by your IT department. For any questions about the content of the Alerts, please contact incident.reporting@hfea.gov.uk. |
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Regarding Clinical Governance:
Patient complaints
Recently several complainants have told us they have not received a copy of their clinic’s complaint policy when requested. Patients explain they find it frustrating having to chase the clinic with numerous e-mails and phone calls, and in one example received a copy of the clinic’s complaint policy a month after receiving the final response to their complaint. When acknowledging a formal complaint from a patient we suggest sending a copy of your complaint policy with this correspondence, either via e-mail, post, or your patient app. You could also provide a link to where this information is held on your website.
Members of staff under investigation by another regulator
Being subject to a fitness to practice investigation via the GMC, NMC or the HCPC can be very daunting for the staff member involved. However, for openness and transparency, we expect the PR to contact our Chief Inspector, Mrs Sharon Fensome-Rimmer: Sharon.Fensome-Rimmer@HFEA.GOV.UK about the referral. We appreciate the very sensitive nature of these referrals, and this information will be treated as highly confidential.
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Editorial statement
Clinic Focus is the official electronic newsletter of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, is produced by the editorial team of the HFEA and provides a monthly roundup of news and information for clinics and their staff working in the field of fertility treatment. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission. You can view our privacy policy on our website. Click here to unsubscribe 2 Redman Place London E20 1JQ © Copyright Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, 2019 |
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