Quality and Safety

Over the last number of decades the quality and safety of our health and social care services has increasingly become one of the main priorities of policy makers, clinicians, patients and users of services, politicians and providers. This section contains resources that both professionals and the general public can use to drive safer, better care across the health and social care services.

Quality and Safety for all

We believe that everyone has a role to play in improving the quality and safety of health and social care services across the country. Read our standards or see our checklist for choosing a nursing home or a list of registered nursing homes.

We are fully committed to hearing from the public, service users, service providers, those working in the health and social care sectors and any other interested parties. Find out more about how you can get involved.

Safety and Quality for health and social care professionals

Building a Culture of Patient Safety

Building a Culture of Patient Safety: the Report of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance contains several key recommendations for the Authority. One of these recommendations is that we will become licensing authority for public and private healthcare providers.

Standards

We are responsible for setting standards on safety and quality for health and social care services. Under legislation, these standards are applicable to services provided by or on behalf of the Health Service Executive (HSE) as well as services provided by a nursing home. Examples include but are not limited to: acute hospitals, community hospitals, nursing homes/hospitals, district hospitals, health centres, dental clinics, childcare residential services, primary care services, home care, etc. Our standards are in keeping with the best and most up-to-date national and international evidence.

How we do it

We assess services to monitor that they are doing what is required of them by the standards. We can do this using a variety of approaches including self-assessment, analysing data or reviewing documents submitted to us as well as visiting healthcare providers to carry out assessments using standards.

Current resources:

• Safe surgery checklist
• Information for care providers, including forms and guidelines
• List of registered centres for older people
• National Inventory for Health and Social Care Information Sources in Ireland
• Guidelines on developing of Key Performance Indicators and Minimum Data Sets to monitor healthcare quality.