Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 26 February 2019
368. Deputy Pat Buckley asked the Minister for Health the details of damages and settlements paid out by or for the HSE in each of the years 2014 to 2018, by CHO, respectively, in tabular form; and the nature of the complaint settled. [9477/19]
View answerThe State Claims Agency has a statutory remit to manage personal injury claims, including claims in respect of clinical negligence, on behalf of Delegated State Authorities (DSA’s) including the Health Service Executive.
I have been informed by the State Claims Agency that the information contained in their report has been extracted from the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and relates to HSE, Section 38, and Section 39 healthcare community organisations. The information is available at the following link:
Some Section 38 community locations are reported under CHO Areas 1 to 9 and the remaining voluntary locations reported under ‘Other Voluntary Healthcare organisations’.
The HSE funds a range of service providers under either section 38 or section 39 of the Health Act 2004. Section 38 of the 2004 Act allows the Executive to enter into arrangements with persons for the provision of health or personal social services by those persons on its behalf. Section 39 of the 2004 Act allows the Executive to give assistance to any person or body that provides or proposes to provide a service similar or ancillary to a service that the Executive may provide.
Table 1 in the above link shows the total amount paid in damages per year for Community Areas from 01/01/2014 to 31/12/2018. The Incident/Hazard Category associated with the damages paid are included. In order to protect the anonymity of individual claims, the payments of multiple Incident / Hazard categories have been grouped together where there are a low number of claims. Due to the low numbers of Clinical Claims, the damages payments are shown as a total figure for all CHO Areas.
Criteria used
Total amount paid in damages for all 9 CHO Areas and other voluntary community locations.
Transactions from 01/01/2014 to 31/12/2018
The figures are correct as of 31/12/2018
Definitions:
National Incident Management System (NIMS)
Incidents (which include claims) are reported using the "National Incident Management System". This is hosted by the State Claims Agency (SCA) for the HSE, other Healthcare enterprises and State Authorities. An incident can be a harmful Incident (Adverse Event), no harm incident, near miss, dangerous occurrence (reportable circumstance) or complaint.
Claim
A claim refers to notification of intention to seek compensation for personal injury and/or property damage where it is alleged the State was negligent. The application may be in the form of a letter of claim, an InjuriesBoard.ie application, or a written/oral request.
Incident Hazard/Hazard Category
The incident/hazard category is a high level classification used to describe the cause of an incident. This is based on international recognised hazard classifications but which has been further developed to denote hazards that can have a direct or indirect impact on a person or property. This high-level classification is a grouping together of like type hazards which are broken down in further detail in the sub-hazard type. The high-level hazards include "Clinical Care", "Exposure to Physical Hazards", "Exposure to Psychological Hazards", "Exposure to Chemical Hazards", "Exposure to Biological Hazards", "Crash/Collision" and "Property damage/loss (non-crash collision)".
Transaction Reporting Date
This refers to the date that payments were issued.
Damages
Damages payments include special and general damages payments.
