The trust was one of five to benefit from a five-year, £12.5 million programme announced by Jeremy Hunt in July 2015 to bring in Virginia Mason Medical Center to assist English using their clinical engagement and culture tools including the Patient Safety Alert System and electronic dashboard.

Hunt said "The achievements at Virginia Mason over the past decade are truly inspirational and I’m delighted they will now help NHS staff to learn the lessons that made their hospital one of the safest in the world – patients will see real benefits as a result.

[9] The trust keeps unusually high quality performance data and uses the VitalPac observations system, the Datix incident reporting tool and Allocate's HealthRoster staffing software.

This formed the basis of a study, led by Alison Leary, professor and chair of healthcare and workforce modelling at London South Bank University along with colleagues Dr Rob Cook Wolfram and Dr Sarahjane Jones Birmingham City University at which demonstrated a significant relationship between the number of nurses on duty in hospitals and 40 indicators of patient care and outcomes.

The study, commissioned by Jane Cummings of NHS England was leaked shortly after the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence abandoned its work on safe staffing in hospitals.