On 26 September 2024, the Minister for Health commenced the Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Act 2023. This piece of legislation expands HIQA’s remit into private hospitals and puts new requirements on health services providers to report notifiable incidents to HIQA and the Chief Inspector of Social Services. This will promote greater safety and transparency in healthcare services.
Mandatory open disclosure aims to ensure that patients and their families have access to comprehensive and timely information when something serious goes wrong in a healthcare setting as defined in the Patient Safety Act.
The Act requires health services providers to notify HIQA, the Chief Inspector of Social Services or the Mental Health Commission where appropriate, of certain notifiable incidents, and expands their remits. HIQA will be able to set standards and monitor new services, such as private hospitals.
In March of this year, we held a consultation on amending the scope of the National Standards for Safer Better Healthcare to include private hospitals. At the end of this public consultation, comments were collated to inform the amendment to the scope of the National Standards for Safer Better Healthcare. The updated standards were approved by the Minister for Health. This amendment to scope facilitates monitoring by HIQA in private hospitals against the National Standards for Safer Better Healthcare.
HIQA is now taking notifications from health services providers under the Act as required. Where a health services provider is satisfied that a notifiable incident under the Act has occurred in the course of the provision of a health service to a patient, it must notify HIQA (or the relevant body) no later than seven days from the day the incident occurred. A list of the things that should be notified to HIQA along with the reporting link are available on our website.