Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)
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362. To ask the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 226 of 25 June 2025, the reason a technical amendment is required to the Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Act 2023 to provide HIQA with the power to carry out an independent review of a defined type of serious patient safety incident in a nursing home; the means by which she intends to bring forward this amendment; the timeline for same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36830/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Act 2023 was signed into law on 2 May 2023 and commenced on 26 September 2024 (other than Section 68). It provides a legislative framework for a number of important patient safety issues, including the mandatory open disclosure of a list of specified serious patient safety incidents that must be disclosed to the patient and/or their family, and the expansion of HIQA’s remit into private hospital services.

Alongside a number of other provisions, the Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Act 2023 amends the Health Act 2007 to extend the powers of HIQA. Section 68 provides that a new Section be inserted into the Health Act 2007 to provide the Chief Inspector with a discretionary power to carry out an independent review of a defined type of a serious patient safety incident where some or all of the care of a patient was carried out in a nursing home.

The Chief Inspector will have the power to carry out a review of an incident which may have caused an unintended or unanticipated death or serious injury to the patient, and which occurred in the course of the provision of care to that patient. The Chief Inspector’s review will seek to establish the facts and provide answers to a resident and their family concerning the serious patient safety incident, identifying any learning for the service to allow action to be taken to reduce risk and improve quality and safety in the service going forward. A review may be instigated by the Chief Inspector through the performance of his or her function or upon receipt of a complaint by certain defined persons, to include the resident and relevant family members.

This provision will not replace the responsibility of nursing homes’ services to address concerns. However, it will support patients and their families when something goes seriously wrong with the care they received in a nursing home and will ensure that appropriate external processes are in place to review serious patient safety incidents.

A query was raised as to whether the provisions of Section 68, as it currently stood, included public nursing homes. It is essential that public nursing homes are included, and this was considered by the DOH Legal Department and OPC. Advisory Counsel in the Office of the Attorney General has advised that an amendment will be required to ensure that public nursing homes are also covered by Section 68.

This is a minor technical amendment and the NPSO is currently in the process of seeking a legislative vehicle in which to include this amendment so that it can be commenced at the earliest possible date.