It would be really nice to note somewhere when a patch is released, even if it's a sort of opt-in thing, buried twenty levels deep, as to continue giving the impression that everything is fine in the "oops" hours following a new release.
Otherwise, you're left with one of two choices:
Unnecessarily clearing cache to see if a new patch has been released, which for a large community may have the impact of undoing mechanisms for caching resources that don't need to be uncached, slowing down stuff, and increasing bandwidth.
Going crazy when something that does affect you doesn't work, trying to determine what's happened, eventually getting to the point where you clear cache, and then seeing that there was a patched release some unknown time ago that may have rendered the past hour of running about with your hair on fire unnecessary.
I'd subscribe to a mailing list (or forum here) that featured alerts like "for those of you using Stripe and Commerce, a patch was released today that addresses edge case scenarios where payment is made in Reptilian Kettles, but your Stripe account is set to Grecian Germaniums as the default currency, and the transaction amount is between 46 and 47 parsecs, adjusted for inflation. If this applies to you, run the support tool or download an updated package from the client area." Maybe this applies to two IPS clients, but when it impacts them, it's really an issue for them. I think @SJ77 deals entirely in Reptilian Kettles.
Even having an option to check for new patches without clearing cache would be a welcome addition.