Our Regulatory Support Services Team supports the administration of our regulatory and inspection processes.
One of the team’s roles is to handle information that we receive from the public — including people using services and people working in or with services — in relation to concerns about health and social care services that HIQA regulates and monitors.
Under the Health Act 2007, HIQA does not have a remit to address individual complaints in relation to health and social care services. However, we receive what we term ‘unsolicited information’.
This is information provided to us by anyone who has a concern or an issue with the care provided in nursing homes and residential centres for people with disabilities, children’s services and healthcare services. All items of unsolicited information are risk rated and appropriate action is taken by HIQA.
Our Information Handling Centre team, which is part of our Regulatory Support Services team, receives these concerns from the public in various ways.
David Lowbridge from HIQA comments: “During 2017, the team processed more than 3,300 items of unsolicited information received by phone call, email and letter.
“As a result, the Information Handling Centre team created 1,586 concerns from the public during the year.
“These concerns are then escalated to the case-holding inspector for risk rating and that information is used to support our inspection and monitoring programmes.”
If you wish to contact us in relation to a concern you may have about a specific designated centre, please email concerns@hiqa.ie.
You can find further information on our website by clicking here. For information on complaining about health and social care services, see www.healthcomplaints.ie.