Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The important thing is that the Bill should be fit for purpose. I am concerned about the emergence of a two-tier reporting system. I refer to page 8. I do not understand why there is not one system of logging errors. Going back to the Scally report, it reminds me of where there was a cancer registry and the CervicalCheck list. I wonder why we would have more than one list for logging errors. An error that could technically be seen as being of no harm could be extremely harmful for a particular patient. In the case of someone who is given the wrong antibiotic, it might cause no harm to that person but if he or she was allergic to it, it could kill him or her. There being more than one list to log incidents concerns me.

I refer to the emergence of a seven-day period of reporting. Why seven days? I speak from my own clinical time and if something is not acted on for seven days, there is a chance that the same error will happen again and again. Who came up with seven days? It seems too long. I cannot understand why a period of 24 to 36 hours would not be reasonable where an incident occurs. It is not comparable, but in the private sector, if one was in a factory and glass got into baby food, a week would not be acceptable. I see this seven days as cushioning for people who do not work as efficiently as people in the private sector. I do not think that seven days is acceptable. It will lead to potential further errors, which could result in a list sitting there forever with nothing being done.

Page 13 refers to a "provider" and states "Notifications must be made within seven days of the provider becoming aware of the incident." I might be wrong but my understanding is that "provider" does not refer to the doctor or whoever, but to the hospital. Page 4 states that a health services provider " means ... a person, other than a health practitioner," so technically, if a doctor made a mistake on day one and then it was reported on day six, are we then talking about day 13, which is with seven days on top? Does Dr. Holohan get me? Am I wrong? Could we be talking about 13 days from the incident before any action is taken?