ENGLAND — NHS England is expanding the availability of Martha's Rule helplines across England after staff made more than 1,700 calls to flag concerns about patient care. The helplines have been available at 143 hospital sites in England since September 2024.

Staff made nearly 1,800 calls to the helplines between September 2024 and February this year, and more than 1,000 of those calls helped identify serious deterioration in a patient's condition. The initiative is being expanded to adult and child wards, with plans to extend it to maternity, neonatal and emergency departments.

Martha's Rule encourages families, carers and patients to speak up if they notice changes in a patient's condition and to seek an urgent review from a critical care team if their health is deteriorating and concerns are not being listened to. Under the scheme, clinicians record daily insights about a patient's health directly from families, and staff, including those in junior roles, can request a review from a team independent of the one they work with.

The helplines were set up after a campaign by the parents of 13-year-old Martha Mills, who died from sepsis after being treated at King's College Hospital in London in 2021. In 2022, a coroner ruled that Martha would probably have survived if she had been transferred earlier to intensive care and given appropriate treatment.

Merope Mills, Martha's mother, said "the extremely hierarchical nature of medicine made it hard for junior staff to question their superiors." She said "I've always said that I would have called the Martha's Rule number had it existed when she was in hospital."

Aidan Fowler, National Director of Patient Safety at NHS England, said the scheme had "proven its worth." More than 500 patients were transferred to intensive care as a result of calls to the helpline, Fowler said.

"Some of the really important treatments are antibiotics, fluids given on the ward. And there's about 1,500 people who've had changes of care like that, all of which are potentially affecting outcomes, saving lives," he said.