Reimagining healthcare regulation to enable improvement, learning, and safety

Healthcare regulation refers to the formal oversight of healthcare practices and organisations through standards, monitoring, and accountability mechanisms.12 Although often operating in the background, regulation shapes how care is organised, delivered, and accounted for.Healthcare staff often experience regulation as intrusive and ineffective, interfering with important clinical care.34 Indeed, when poorly aligned with clinical realities, regulatory influence can undermine learning and improvement, contributing to frustration and disengagement.4 However, when better aligned, regulation can actively support improvement.35The consequences of regulatory misalignment are especially urgent amid growing pressure on health systems, driven by workforce shortages, ageing populations, and rising demand for complex care. Clinicians and healthcare leaders are expected to ensure safe, compassionate, high quality care while navigating fragmented systems, uncertainty, and ongoing resource constraints.89 In this context, regulatory approaches that are poorly attuned to everyday clinical realities risk compounding pressures rather than supporting safe and resilient care.Historically, healthcare regulation has focused on…