Britain is lagging behind countries including Norway, Switzerland, Spain and Estonia when it comes to patient safety, a major new report has warned.
In a ranking of the safest places to receive care, the UK placed 21st out of 38 countries in Imperial College London‘s second Global State of Patient Safety Report.
Norway topped the table, followed by the Republic of Korea, Switzerland and Ireland. Below the UK were France in 29th place, Greece in 31st and the US in 34th.
Researchers compared performance across key measures, including deaths from treatable causes such as sepsis and blood clots, as well as maternal deaths and baby deaths linked to premature birth complications, brain damage during delivery, sepsis and other neonatal infections.
The report also warned that thousands of deaths in the UK could be avoided with safer, faster treatment.
It is estimated that if Britain matched Switzerland – the best-performing country for preventable deaths – 22,789 lives could have been saved.
The UK’s poor showing was also driven by long waits for more complex treatment, with the report finding Britain had higher-than-average delays compared with other nations.
It ranked bottom out of 11 countries for waiting times for heart bypass operations, and also came last for rates of deep vein thrombosis following hip or knee replacement.
The NHS lags far behind other countries such as Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Spain and Italy when it comes to patient safety, according to a new report
According to the British Heart Foundation, 397,478 people were waiting for ‘routine’ cardiac care in England at the end of September 2025.
Research has previously found that the longer people wait for treatment, the higher their risk of becoming disabled from heart failure or dying prematurely.
The report looked specifically at countries in the Organisation for Economic Co–operation and Development (OECD) – a group of 38 mostly wealthy, developed nations whose health systems and outcomes are often compared.
James Titcombe, chief executive of Patient Safety Watch and one of the report’s authors, said: ‘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.’
Mr Titcombe, who lost his son Joshua after NHS safety failings in 2008 and has since campaigned on patient safety, added: ‘Preventable failures in care send ripples of suffering through families, communities and the NHS workforce, traumatising staff, undermining trust.
‘It diverts 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.’
Failings in women’s health also came under scrutiny, with the UK ranked ninth out of 10 countries for hysterectomy waiting times. Maternity care also failed to score highly when compared with other nations.
The leading cause of neonatal mortality in the UK is preterm birth, and since 2003 Britain has consistently performed worse than the OECD average on this measure.
And although the neonatal death rate in the UK has fallen since 2000, it has plateaued since 2017, while the average death rate among other countries has continued to fall.
If the UK had matched the neonatal mortality rate of Japan in 2023 – the top OECD country for this measure – there could have been 1,123 fewer neonatal deaths.
The UK also ranked last out of 10 countries for patients falling ill with sepsis following abdominal or pelvic surgery.
Meanwhile, wider data in an accompanying tool – using figures from 205 countries – ranked the UK 141st for deaths due to adverse events following medical procedures.
These are unintended injuries or complications resulting from healthcare management rather than the patient’s underlying disease.
Adverse events can include deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that forms in a deep vein, pulmonary embolism, a blockage in an artery in the lungs, and sepsis.
While OECD rates for four out of five indicators for surgical complications have fallen since 2009, the UK recorded the highest complication rates for three of the indicators where data was available, the report said.
For pulmonary embolism following hip and knee replacement, the UK experienced an upward trend during and after the Covid–19 pandemic.
Surgery and anaesthesia have been major focus areas for patient safety improvement efforts over the past 25 years, particularly through standardised processes before, during and after operations.
The report will be launched by Health Secretary Wes Streeting and former Health Secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt at the House of Lords on Thursday.
Lord Darzi, director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, and one of the report’s authors, said: ‘This report 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.’
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘This Government inherited an NHS that was failing too many patients and families.
‘We have taken rapid action to strengthen patient safety – overhauling the Care Quality Commission, rolling out Martha’s Rule and Jess’s Rule so patients can get a fresh clinical review, and introducing hospital league tables to drive improvement.
‘We have also brought in new maternity safety measures and are establishing a task force so every mother can have confidence in NHS care once again.
‘We know there is much more to do but we are determined to make sure the NHS is the safest in the world.’