Welcome to the latest issue of HIQA News.
I am pleased to introduce you to Dr Pat O’Mahony, who was appointed as the new Chairperson of our Board this month. With his depth of governance, regulatory and health-related expertise, Dr O’Mahony’s appointment will be hugely beneficial to the future strategic direction and success of HIQA and comes at a key time when we are developing a new three-year corporate plan. We welcome the guidance and experience that Dr O’Mahony will bring to HIQA as our remit continues to expand.
This week we have commenced a public consultation on our draft Corporate Plan for 2019–2021. The plan outlines HIQA’s key objectives for the next three years to protect the public and improve the quality of services by carrying out health technology assessments, collaborating with other agencies on work such as the National Patient Experience Survey and HRB-CICER, setting standards and producing guidance, advising on health information, and regulating and monitoring health and social care services. We welcome your feedback on this plan.
In this issue of HIQA News we have updates on all of these functions and the work we’ve completed over the past number of weeks to finalise the registration of centres for people with disabilities, begin research on new health technologies, and develop guidance to ensure the data collected by health and social care organisations is of a high quality and accurate.
We are also holding public consultations on the development of a guidance to support a rights-based approach in services, and guidelines for evaluating the clinical effectiveness of health technologies in Ireland.
Furthermore, in this issue you will see that our teams have been sharing their work at conferences and workshops to ensure quality improvement and learning occurs across health and social care services. I also had the pleasure of speaking at a Roundtable on Advocacy organised by Safeguarding Ireland earlier this month, where numerous organisations came together in support of independent advocacy and to begin developing a framework for the future of independent advocacy in Ireland.
Until the next time, best wishes.
Phelim Quinn