Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Patient identifiers are key here, that is a common thread. Going back to the issue of sharing information, the one bugbear a lot of families have at the moment in the context of Covid, RSV and so on, particularly if someone is elderly but not only then, within the hospital system it is not possible to accompany someone in through the accident and emergency department. There was mention of accessing files and so on. If someone is in a different hospital, for instance if my hospital is the Mater and I end up in St. James's, the systems do not talk to each other even though it is only the other side of the city. That is a big difficulty. If I have surgery, it is nearly impossible to get in touch with the surgery team at the moment. There was recently a case of someone who became ill after surgery. The family were trying to get talking to someone but there is no email address or phone number. They could not get through the system. They are just basic things that are in the system. If people had access to their files, they would be able see where things went right or what an operation did or did not do. It is informing the patient and the individual, which is a key part of this whole debate.