Patient Safety Policy and Governance

The Department of Health is developing a Complaints and Patient Safety Incidents Policy to set the key principles, priorities and outcomes that will enable health care providers to effectively manage complaints and patient safety incidents with a consistent approach nationally across all Irish health and social care services.

It is intended the policy will lead the direction for legislative change to provide the Ombudsman with authority to deal with clinical complaints as outlined within the Programme for Government objectives.

The policy and legislative outcome will provide an oversight and escalation mechanism for patients and families that are dissatisfied with their clinical care.

The work will be supported by the introduction of the Patient Safety Bill that will mandate open disclosure on a range of patient safety incidents. It will enable patient advocacy services to be more fully built into health service complaints which will ensure that patients and families are provided with more effective supports for complaints and patient safety incidents.

The NPSO Policy and Governance Unit leads and coordinates the Departments engagement with the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA)

HIQA is an independent statutory authority established to promote safety and quality in the provision of health and social care services for the benefit of the health and welfare of the public.

HIQA has responsibility for the following:

• Setting standards for health and social care services
• Regulating social care services
• Regulating health services
• Monitoring services
• Health technology assessment
• Health information
• National Care Experience Programme

More information about HIQA can be found on their homepage.