Hiqa plans review of patient nutrition

A major review of the quality of food and other nutrition provided to hospital patients is being planned by the State’s health watchdog.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) said the review would ensure the individual hydration and nutrition needs of patients were being adequately assessed, managed and evaluated in the acute hospital system.

Hospitals would be encouraged to self-assess their performance, starting soon with a pilot programme in three hospitals and covering all hospitals by the end of the year. This self-assessment programme would be checked through inspections in 13 hospitals, according to Hiqa chief executive Phelim Quinn.

Mr Quinn, who was delivering the keynote address at the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) annual conference in Trim, Co Meath, also promised a further review of “certain aspects” of maternity care. The authority’s report on maternity and other services at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise would be published “very shortly”, he said.

Breaches

Mr Quinn said recent inspections of institutional services in the public, private and voluntary sectors had highlighted a number of fundamental breaches of regulations and, in some cases, of the human rights of individuals.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran said nurses shared the wish of Hiqa to enhance services where they had failed. However, all too frequently, when issues on the ground were not addressed, it was the individual nurse who was left isolated and alone before a professional body. “This has to stop,” he told delegates.

Shorter working hours and the continuing trolley crisis in emergency departments top the agenda for the three-day conference, which opened yesterday.

Restoration of pay

The union is seeking a return to a 37½-hour working week, several years after nurses agreed to work an extra 90 minutes a week under cost-cutting measures agreed with the Government as part of the Haddington Road agreement.

In line with other public sector unions, it also wants a significant first step towards the reversal of pay cuts.

It said the latest trolley figures, which revealed a 26 per cent rise in the number of patients waiting for admission to hospital last month compared to April last year, were very worrying. Of particular concern was a sharp increase in trolley numbers in hospitals outside Dublin – up from 12 in April 2014 to 806 last month.

Figures for this week showed there were 465 patients on trolleys or on wards waiting for admission to a bed.The Government has provided an additional €74 million to implement the recommendations of the emergency department task force report, but the INMO says this will not be enough to solve the problem.

Mr Doran, who co-chaired the taskforce, described the extra funding as welcome but said much more was needed.