The Health Service Executive (HSE) will today announce plans to begin collecting information on patients' ethnicity as part of a five-year plan to improve health services for foreign nationals and ethnic minorities.
The information will be used to measure the extent to which ethnic minorities are accessing health services and whether they have poorer outcomes compared to the rest of the population.
It is one of a series of measures contained in the HSE's National Intercultural Strategy, which is due to be launched by Minister for Health Mary Harney later today. A total of €1 million is being set aside to implement the plan this year.
Research shows that people from diverse cultures and ethnic backgrounds are at a much higher risk of poverty and social exclusion. A total of 10 per cent of the population is now foreign-born, while foreign nationals account for up to one-in-six patients at some hospitals.
The strategy also includes plans to establish a national translation service to help overcome language barriers between health professionals and patients.
Language difficulties have resulted in some non-Irish patients being forced to communicate with health professionals using gestures, miming or the help of children, even though their health needs may have been very complex.
Guidelines are being developed for staff in relation to accessing and using interpretation and translation services. The strategy does not contain details of how such a national service will operate, partly because it is possible the HSE's service may link with other interpretative services being examined by other State agencies.
The blueprint notes that despite good practice in the area of minority ethnic health in some parts of the country, overall it tends to be fragmented with access to services often dependent on geographical location rather than need.
Some examples of good practice highlighted in the strategy include an advertising campaign in Polish in north Co Dublin to promote an out-of-hours GP service; local health offices in west Dublin providing information in a number of languages; the translation of information booklets on topics such as diabetes and recognition of marriages of non-Irish nationals.
HSE officials say the intercultural strategy represents a way of developing a framework within which good practice may be developed and replicated across the entire health service.
The strategy contains details of how staff of the HSE is becoming more diverse. For example, non-Irish staff account for more than half (54 per cent) of junior doctors, 33 per cent of those in the medical/dental field, and 14 per cent of nurses and midwives.