We recently published an overview report of our monitoring programme against the national standards in emergency departments in 2022.
Throughout 2022, HIQA commenced a new monitoring programme of inspections in healthcare services against the National Standards for Safer Better Healthcare. As part of the initial phase, HIQA’s core assessment in emergency departments focused on key standards relating to governance, leadership and management, workforce, person-centred care and safe and effective care.
The inspections found that the Irish health system is under unprecedented strain as it continues to see an increasing number of patients presenting to emergency departments, which is significantly higher than in previous years. Issues identified include ineffective patient flow, limited bed capacity, reduced access to community services and insufficient staffing levels, which continue to cause overcrowding in Irish emergency departments.
Sean Egan, HIQA’s Director of Healthcare, said: “Findings from this new programme of inspections continue to highlight that overcrowding in emergency departments compromises the dignity and respect of patients, and poses a risk to health and safety of patients. Improvements are needed to ensure that there is a balanced approach to the daily operational management of patient flow, capacity and appropriate staffing, which is clearly linked to patient safety and activity.”
As part of each inspection, inspectors spoke with a sample of patients to understand and document their experiences of care. Generally, patients acknowledged the challenges faced by the environment in which they were receiving care, but were generally complimentary of staff.
Through the inspection findings, we identified four key areas for both immediate and longer-term attention to address safety issues in our emergency departments. These are:
- The need to continue to urgently build additional capacity within the whole healthcare system, both acute and community
- More responsive leadership, governance and management arrangements at local, regional and national level which acts to address performance issues when identified
- A more effective approach to strategic workforce planning to better anticipate and manage shortages
- More effective approach to strategic workforce planning to better anticipate and manage shortages.
HIQA monitors public hospitals against national standards to promote continual, sustained quality improvement in healthcare services and will continue its monitoring programme of inspections in 2023.
Read the report on www.hiqa.ie.