Mr. Sean Egan:

Like other regulators, we monitor and regulate on the basis of risk. Our information in relation to where risk issues may arise can come from many different sources. It can be generic risk that we know is an issue in any health care facility. The particular focus we take in our standard approach includes looking at the approach to the management of risk associated with medicines, and infection prevention and control. Within that clearly there is a procurement element around the governance of those particular issues. Equally, should risk issues arise through information that comes to our attention - we have a function around receipt of solicited or unsolicited information from staff members or from the public - that may form part of our assessment as we decide what to focus on within an inspection. It is important to realise that we need to prioritise on the basis of available information. Hospitals are extremely complex organisations and we need to focus on the issues that we are aware of and all of the sources of information that inform our intelligence as part of the monitoring process. We have the ability to probe as we need to through our inspection approach.