Publication
Patient Safety Surveillance & Performance
From Department of Health
Published on
Last updated on
The National Patient Safety Office (NPSO) utilises key patient safety data and KPIs from various performance related quality and patient safety reporting sources to build intelligence and inform patient safety policy priorities and initiatives.
The collection of data is not an endpoint and it is important that robust mechanisms and processes are place to support data collection, validation, analysis and use. The surveillance of patient safety performance data is part of the quality improvement cyclical process and findings can be considered in future policy development, evaluation and monitoring. This may apply across various patient, service and clinical cohorts.
In close collaboration with key stakeholders, the NPSO engages with the analysis and interpretation of patient safety, quality and care experience data to support and inform policy.
The National Healthcare Quality Reporting System (NHQRS) is the Irish health indicator framework which provides publicly available information on the quality of healthcare. It allows data on the quality of Ireland’s health service to be transparently shared with patients, service providers and policy makers.
The NHQRS is an established publication which reports on a broad, balanced range of indicators of health service structures, process and outcomes with the purpose of providing a means of comparison against international data and nationally accepted standards and best practice.
The publication of the NHQRS report provides a mechanism through which data about the quality of Ireland's healthcare structures, processes and outcomes can be compared year-on-year, showing, in many cases, incremental improvements, and in some areas of care where further improvements are required
The process of developing each report is overseen by the Governance Committee and supported by the Technical Group. The first NHQRS report was published by the Department of Health in 2015. All reports are available here.
The National Care Experience Programme (NCEP) was established in 2016 and is a tripartite partnership of the Department of Health, HIQA, and the HSE. It oversees the development, rollout and reporting of a suite of healthcare experience surveys.
The NCEP aims to provide people who use health and social care services with the opportunity to share their experience, this will in turn help partner organisations to:
- Delivering and planning for future healthcare
- Improving the quality of healthcare and patient safety
- Improving patient and service user’s experience of care
Since its establishment, the work of the NCEP has been expanding and evolving covering care settings including acute hospitals, maternity services, maternity bereavement services and nursing homes to date. Further information on the National Care Experience Programme can be found here.
The Paediatric Spinal Taskforce was first established by the Minister for Health in March 2024 and is independently chaired by Mark Connaughton SC. The membership of the taskforce comprises representatives from patient advocacy groups, the HSE, Children’s Health Ireland and the Department of Health.
This multi-stakeholder Taskforce has been established to drive improvements and enable all stakeholders to contribute to the improvement and development of our paediatric spinal services. The range of stakeholders represented on this Taskforce bring their own expertise, experience and perspectives and this important collaborative effort provides a whole of system approach to progressing this significant area of work. The Taskforce held its first meeting on 2 May 2024.
Minutes of the Taskforce meetings, statements from the Taskforce and other communications will be posted here. Any queries, please email: TaskforceChair@health.gov.ie
