From Department of Health
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The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has launched a public consultation on a draft national policy for the remuneration of certain categories of patient representatives to be known as “Patient Voice Partners” who sit on committees and working groups in the Irish health and social care sector.
The Department of Health developed the draft national patient voice partners policy to acknowledge the central role that patients have to play in the development of health policy and the reform of health services.
The development of the policy was informed by the significant contribution that patient representatives make on an ongoing basis to the work of the Department of Health, the HSE, and health agencies.
This consultation will be open until 5pm on 1 March 2023.
Launching the public consultation, Minister Donnelly said:
“The government is committed to recognising the value of patient representation in all aspects of health service development, reform, and implementation. Where people are working in partnership with the health services, we will recognise their contribution through remuneration."
This supports the Sláintecare Implementation Strategy 2018 and its commitment to involving patients and service users in the design and delivery of the full range of actions identified in the Implementation Strategy (Sláintecare Implementation Strategy and Action Plan 2021-2023). The feedback from this public consultation will inform some of the critical aspects of the draft national patient voice partners policy and support this important work.
The policy will impact on a wide range of stakeholders right across the health and social care sector including public and private health and social care service providers as well as health and social care regulators, educators, and other relevant bodies and organisations. The Department of Health wishes to obtain the views of those stakeholders, patient reps, service users, and the wider public.
This public consultation is being conducted by the Department of Health in Ireland. The consultation consists of an online survey which seeks the views and opinions of patients and service users, patient representatives, health and social care professionals, organisations, and interested members of the public, on the key provisions of the draft PVP policy.
The views and opinions collected will be considered and will be used to inform the final draft of the PVP policy prior to publication.
An executive summary of the PVP policy and the full draft PVP policy is available to read below. Please click on the ‘Complete Survey’ link below to take the survey. You will be redirected to the EU survey site where you will be given further instructions on how to complete the survey.
For any inquiries relating to the public consultation, please email: pvp_policy@health.gov.ie
All responses to the questionnaire are anonymous. A consultation report will be prepared based on the responses to this questionnaire, however, individual responses will not be reported.
The findings of the report will inform the final policy document which will be published at a later date.
All submissions will be retained until such time as they are appraised by the National Archives to determine whether they warrant permanent retention as archives in accordance with the department’s obligations under the terms of the National Archives Act, 1986.
Any personal information submitted to the department will be treated strictly in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/67 and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Please note people can request to see the submissions we receive under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2014 and therefore submissions may be released in response to an FOI request. This is more likely to happen for submissions from organisations. This means that the requestor might get your answers to the questionnaire, however, any personal information included in submissions would be redacted prior to release. If you have any queries, please email: pvp_policy@health.gov.ie
