Patient Safety

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 July 2016

Thursday, 21 July 2016

Questions (612, 613, 614, 615)

Billy Kelleher

Question:

612. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Health the percentage of serious reportable events currently being notified within 24 hours to a designated officer. [23943/16]

Billy Kelleher

Question:

613. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Health the percentage of mandatory investigations commenced within 48 hours of the events occurring. [23944/16]

Billy Kelleher

Question:

614. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Health the percentage of mandatory investigations currently completed within four months of notification of the events occurring. [23945/16]

Billy Kelleher

Question:

615. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Health the percentage of reportable events in 2016 reported within 30 days of occurrence to the designated officer. [23946/16]

Written answers

Minister for Health

I propose to take Questions Nos. 612 to 615, inclusive, together.

As these are service matters, they have been referred to the Health Service Executive for attention and direct reply to the Deputy. However, I would underline the importance which I attach to improving patient safety. Related to that, it is widely acknowledged that a strong patient safety culture is linked to high patient safety incident reporting. Increased incident reporting should lead to earlier identification of patterns and trends in clinical incidents in order to maximise learning as swiftly as possible in the health system.

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was established by the State Claims Agency. The NIMS has the capacity to manage no harm incidents, near misses, dangerous occurrences and complaints as collectively defined by the World Health Organization. All incidents in the healthcare sector including Serious Reportable Events (SREs) which are the most serious forms of error that cause harm to patients must be reported directly on to NIMS since June 2015.

The General Scheme of the Health Information and Patient Safety Bill provides that public health service providers must notify serious patient incidents (reportable incidents) occurring in their services to the State Claims Agency and to HIQA or the Mental Health Commission, as appropriate.

The Department has taken very seriously the critical challenges to the health services in relation to patient safety. A number of crucial gaps in relation to patient safety leadership and patient safety culture at both policy and service delivery level were examined in 2015 and in direct response to this a set of far reaching and significant patient safety reforms was proposed in line with international best practice.

In November 2015, the Government approved a major programme of patient safety reforms which included the establishment of a National Patient Safety Office (NPSO) in the Department of Health. The establishment of the NPSO is to provide the Department with the capacity to take greater oversight of the system of patient safety to support the Minister’s need for a direct and accountable implementation response to patient safety incidents, HIQA recommendations, National Clinical Effectiveness Committee (NCEC) guidelines and escalation alerts to the State Claims Agency.

It is intended that the NPSO will provide the required leadership and direction with regard to patient safety policy and legislation relevant to patient safety for the healthcare system. It will develop the model for the new National Patient Advocacy Service. Through surveillance of patient safety trends, production of patient safety and complaints profiles for specific patient, clinical and service cohorts, and, delivery of the national framework for clinical effectiveness it will identify, based on evidence, patient safety priorities and required patient safety initiatives.

Appropriate management and reporting of patient safety incidents is a key aspect of overall policy and system requirements for a safe quality health system. Patient safety incidents can have significant impacts on individual patients and as such are treated as a high priority by my Department.