Written answers
Tuesday, 31 May 2022
Department of Health
Departmental Investigations
Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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649. To ask the Minister for Health if a new group has been formed to investigate maternal deaths; if a person (details supplied) is leading this investigation; the timeline being worked towards; its budget; its membership; to whom it reports; if this proposal has been before the Houses of the Oireachtas or the Cabinet for approval; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27331/22]
Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Serious adverse events in maternity care have a devastating impact on the families concerned. It is vital that our health services take steps to ensure serious adverse events in maternity care are appropriately reviewed and responded to at a national level.
The HSE's Incident Management Framework was launched in 2018 and updated in 2020. The HSE’s Incident Management Framework is applied to the management of individual incidents and is the mechanism for incident investigations in the HSE, including maternal deaths.
In addition to these processes, the HSE Obstetric Event Support Team (OEST) is a new initiative which was established in 2022 to establish a team within the National Women and Infant Health Programme (NWIHP) to provide objective oversight over a specified list of obstetric clinical incidents occurring within Maternity Networks. The OEST has an initial staffing requirement of 4 Whole-time Equivalents (WTEs) including a Clinical Director, Midwife and case managers. Dr Peter McKenna is the Clinical Lead for the OEST process. Funding of €540,000 was provided to support the establishment and expansion of the OEST across the maternity network from Budget 2022.
The aim of the OEST is to support the networks as they respond to the events in terms of overseeing and advising on appointment of the review panel, family engagement, conduct of the review, finalisation of the review report and follow up. In addition to assisting the health services in responding to severe maternity related incidents and in the provision of appropriate supports for patients and families, the OEST aims to ensure appropriate expert level support is available nationally by enabling learning from adverse maternity incidents to be actioned at a national level and by promoting engagement with relevant stakeholders across the maternity network. It is anticipated that this will lead to safer and improved high-quality of care for patients and families.
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