{"id":127727,"date":"2025-11-07T23:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T23:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/127727\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T23:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T23:54:07","slug":"three-deaths-among-24-adverse-events-reported-to-hiqa-under-new-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/127727\/","title":{"rendered":"Three deaths among 24 adverse events reported to Hiqa under new legislation\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The deaths of an expectant mother and three babies were among 24 adverse events referred to the State\u2019s health watchdog under new hospital reporting rules.<\/p>\n<p>In its latest annual Overview Report of Healthcare Services, the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) revealed it received the notifications of adverse events between September 26 and December 31 last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Three of them were described as the unintended or unanticipated death of a healthy patient undergoing elective surgery, and three were described as the unintended or unanticipated death directly related to medical treatment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">It also included 12 incidents where babies were referred for therapeutic hypothermia, also known as neo-natal cooling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Of the notifications Hiqa received, 22 were received from public, acute, and specialist settings and two were submitted by private hospitals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The Patient Safety Act 2023 requires certain incidents to be notified to Hiqa by healthcare service providers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">These relate to serious adverse events resulting in unanticipated and unintended deaths or outcomes of traumatic births. The occurrence of such an accident is not necessarily an indication of poor care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The legislation has expanded Hiqa\u2019s remit into private hospitals for the first time, meaning both public and private hospitals are now monitored against the national standards for safer, better healthcare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Hiqa said: \u201cThe commencement of the Patient Safety Act was an important milestone for the entire health sector.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            It mandated the notification of incidents from healthcare services to Hiqa for the first time, expanded Hiqa\u2019s monitoring remit to private hospitals, and further supports the promotion of quality and safety across healthcare services, both public and private.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The watchdog said it has seen continued effort from many service providers to use findings from inspections to drive improvements and positive outcomes for patients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">It added: \u201cIreland\u2019s health service continues to be challenged by capacity, staffing and infrastructural issues which highlight the need for resilient services that can meet the needs of the population now and into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The overview report noted that in 2024, Hiqa received 1,769 pieces of feedback for all services within its remit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Hiqa said its inspections have shown examples of improved levels of compliance in healthcare services in 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">In situations where findings from previous inspections facilitated comparison on re-inspection in 2024, it stated 41% of national standards assessed on re-inspection showed improvements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">In addition, in facilities that provide medical exposure to ionising radiation, the number of regulations assessed as not compliant was 5%, which is lower than the 12% identified between 2021 and 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The deaths of an expectant mother and three babies were among 24 adverse events referred to the State\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,23813,2120,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-127727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-hiqa","12":"tag-hse","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}