Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 5, line 17, to delete “private hospitals” and substitute the following: “private hospitals, to provide for the review by the chief inspector of certain incidents occurring in the course of the provision of a health service to a person by certain entities”.

This group of amendments - group 2 - concerns the nursing home amendments and giving HIQA the important power to intervene. I flagged this amendment on Committee Stage when I advised the committee that I proposed to give the HIQA chief inspector of social services "a discretionary power to carry out a review of certain serious patient safety incidents that occur during the provision of healthcare where some or all of the care of the patient is carried out in a nursing home". This policy was approved by the Cabinet in October 2021. This proposed amendment will seek to support patients and their families when something goes wrong with the clinical care they received in a nursing home. It will ensure appropriate external processes are in place to review serious patient safety incidents.

The amendment follows the report of the Covid-19 nursing home expert panel recommendations that called for suitable structures to be put in place for external oversight of individual care concerns arising in nursing homes. This power will not replace the responsibility of nursing homes to address concerns that are raised by patients and families. It would put in place an appropriate escalation pathway to ensure the concerns are addressed in a way that will provide answers to patients and their families.

In effect, the amendment will give HIQA the discretionary power to review an individual serious patient safety event, called a "specified incident" in this provision, in a nursing home that may have occurred when clinical care was being delivered. The amendment will seek to support patients and their families when something goes wrong with the clinical care they received and ensure that the appropriate external processes are in place. Pending completion of broader work on clinical complaints legislation, which we discussed, and policy across the health and social service sector, priority is being given to providing HIQA with this discretionary power.

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