Home > Overview report on the monitoring and regulation of healthcare services in 2020.

Health Information and Quality Authority. (2021) Overview report on the monitoring and regulation of healthcare services in 2020. Dublin: HIQA.

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Implementing and monitoring compliance with national standards — and ensuring compliance with the medical ionising radiation regulations — helps to enable healthcare providers to sustainably safeguard people using services from potential harm and to continually improve the quality and safety of care and services. Our role is to promote continual, sustained quality improvement in healthcare services. However, our powers in relation to healthcare settings remain relatively limited. We do not have powers of enforcement in healthcare, other than when regulating medical exposures to ionising radiation, such as X-rays or radiation therapy safety. However, where risk issues are identified, these are reported to either the Health Service Executive (HSE) or to the Department of Health. Proposed legal changes, as set out in the Patient Safety (Licensing) Bill and Patient Safety (Notifiable Patient Safety Incidents) Bill 2019, would see a major change and expansion to HIQA’s role.

During 2020, HIQA focused on a number of key areas of patient safety across healthcare services. These included:

  • infection prevention and control in public acute hospitals and rehabilitation and community settings
  • rehabilitation and community inpatient services — with a particular focus on governance and risk management, safe use of medicines and measures to ensure the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections
  • medication safety — with a particular focus on high-risk medications and high-risk situations in public acute hospitals
  • and medical exposure to ionising radiation in public and private radiological facilities encompassing medical and dental X-ray services.

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