Written answers

Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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254. To ask the Minister for Health following the publication of the health care quality indicators in the Irish health system report last week, the date on which his Department became aware of the patient safety concern regarding Roscommon hospital; the date on which the Health Service Executive was informed of this concern and the corresponding date on which the hospital was contacted; the date on which his Department received a response back from either the HSE and-or Roscommon hospital; the follow-up actions that were taken; the date on which safety concerns were addressed to the satisfaction of his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9918/14]

Photo of James ReillyJames Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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My Department published the report “Health Care Quality Indicators in the Irish Health System: Examining the Potential of Hospital Discharge Data using the Hospital Inpatient Enquiry System” on the 17th February 2014.

The purpose of the report was to assess the feasibility of using the HIPE system to derive healthcare quality indicators that could be used in the future to measure the quality of the care provided in our hospitals. The analysis and the report is about the quality of the selected indicators and data not the quality of care.

This analysis of HIPE data was a process that involved ongoing discussion with the HSE. During 2011 the analysis highlighted a number of variations with a small number of hospitals being identified as outliers for certain indicators. There are a lot of possible explanations for these variations including issues relating to the coding of the principle diagnosis, coding of the healthcare records to the HIPE system, inclusion of confounding factors in the analysis of the indicators and quality of care. However, this analysis of the data does not allow for an underlying variation in the quality of care to be excluded. Therefore it was necessary for this information to be reflected back to the hospitals as only the hospitals are in a position to assess their data to determine the reasons for the variation. This information was communicated through the Quality and Patient Safety Directorate, HSE to the hospitals in mid 2011.

My Department has been assured by the HSE that the hospitals have had the opportunity both to correct their data and address any quality of care issues.

This report confirms the value of the HIPE system as a resource for the development of indicators of quality of care in our hospitals but it also shows that hospital data and the indicators need to be further refined before they can be used for this purpose.

Measuring the quality of our healthcare and publicly reporting how our services are performing is part of my Government’s commitment to improved accountability and continued improvement in our health services.

It is my intention that my Department will publish a report on quality healthcare indicators at national, regional and hospital level later this year which will be based on corrected data and will identify hospitals.

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