Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

20. To ask the Minister for Health the procedures in place to enable the sharing of best practice between hospital groups; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28313/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Reports The Establishment of Hospital Groups as a transition to Independent Hospital Trusts (DoH, 2013) and Securing the Future of Smaller Hospitals: A Framework for Development  (HSE, 2013) provided the foundations for the reorganisation of hospital services into Hospital Groups. The goal of this reform is to develop a world class person-centred hospital service that values and empowers staff to deliver safe, high quality, integrated services based on health care needs and driven by efficiency and best clinical evidence, research, practice, education and innovation leading to better patient outcomes.

The implementation of Hospital Groups is continuing, with a more co-ordinated approach to the planning and delivery of services across all the hospitals within the group. This allows for a stronger role for smaller hospitals in delivering less complex care while ensuring that patients who require true emergency or complex planned care are managed safely in larger hospitals.

The HSE has established a Hospital Group CEO Forum that enables and supports information sharing across Hospital Groups. The membership includes all Hospital Group CEOs and the Forum is now well established with meetings held monthly. The Hospital Group CEOs also meet regularly with the HSE National Director for Acute Operations.

Further, the HSE Clinical Strategy and Programmes Division (CSPD) was established to rethink the delivery of health and social care in order to improve and standardise patient care across all healthcare settings, irrespective of location. The CSPD works to bring together clinical disciplines, enabling them to share innovative, evidence-based solutions in the interest of providing improved person-centred care. As part of this, the National Clinical Programmes have been established to improve and standardise patient care by bringing together clinical disciplines and enabling them to share innovative solutions to deliver greater benefits to every user of our services. The programmes involve close collaboration between the HSE and the Colleges, working in partnership with patients, nursing and therapy leads, and with the Department of Health. Each of the Clinical Programmes has a Clinical Lead, a multi-disciplinary Working Group (including patient representatives), and a Clinical Advisory Group. Having a wide range of clinicians involved means that the proposed solutions are more robust in their conception, and supports effective implementation.

The Clinical Programmes are tasked with improving specific areas of the health service. This is achieved by designing and specifying standardised models of care, guidelines, pathways and associated strategies for the delivery of integrated clinical care. The programmes provide clinical leadership to support local implementation teams where needed.  Examples include National Clinical Programmes for Acute Medicine, Acute Surgery, COPD, Diabetes, Emergency Medicine, Critical Care, Chronic Heart Disease, Stroke and many more.

A further platform to share good practice is through the Health Service Excellence Awards. Held annually, these enable the HSE to identify new and creative service developments that can be shared and implemented, as appropriate, in different parts of the health system.