Vol. 492 No. 4
14 Mr. Allen asked the Minister for Health and Children if his Department will compile a list of deaths in each hospital related to each type of surgical procedure and general health care in order to detect major defects in the delivery of acute hospital care and to avoid the situation that has arisen in Bristol, United Kingdom, where 29 young children died undergoing heart surgery. [14012/98]
The Hospital In-Patient Enquiry — HIPE — contains information on all discharges of patients from publicly funded acute hospitals in Ireland. The system provides detailed data on diagnosis and surgical procedures for each in-patient episode together with an indicator for discharge status which allows hospital deaths to be recorded.
Data on hospital mortality from HIPE has been used from time to time on a national basis. However, individual hospital mortality rates by procedure have not, to date, been used as a performance measure. There are a number of difficulties concerning the interpretation of mortality data as a true performance indicator. Issues such as case complexity, age profile and the lack of a single patient identifier all need to be taken into account in any meaningful comparative analysis. It is my view that these data sets should principally be used to health board and hospital level, in consultation with the clinicians involved.
