Patient advocate to be appointed to new HSE board, Minister says

At least one patient advocate will be appointed to the nine-member HSE board when it is established, Minister for Health Simon Harris has said.

Replying in the Dáil to a Sinn Féin motion demanding the introduction of mandatory open disclosure, Mr Harris said the new Patient Safety Bill would provide for such disclosure in serious patient safety incidents.

The Minister, who pledged the legislation would be introduced in the wake of the CervicalCheck cancer screening controversy, said his planned Bill would require mandatory open disclosure of these serious incidents to the patients affected.

The appropriate regulatory authority such as Hiqa or the Mental Health Commission will also have to be informed, he added.

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The legislation will also include Ministerial guidelines for clinical audits and the extension of Hiqa’s remit to cover private hospitals.

Private hospitals are not currently subject to inspection by the State’s health regulatory agency. He said there had been “too many examples where patients have not been dealt with honestly and openly”.

The Minister added that the trust placed in those who care for patients is a sacred one.

“When breached, it is an extra injury.”

He said patients who had been through the worst of circumstances “are strongly motivated by the wish that what happened to them should never happen to anyone else”.

Maternity services

Mr Harris pointed to the controversy over maternity services in Portlaoise Hospital and the subsequent Hiqa investigation and in Portiuncula in Co Galway, the report on which was published a fortnight ago.

The Department of Health would place “great emphasis on engaging with patients who have experienced harm, in a sensitive and compassionate way”.

Mr Harris added that he had informed the Government of his intention “to ensure the appointment of a patient advocate to the new board of the HSE when I received approval this morning to proceed with the legislation to establish it”.

Introducing the motion calling for mandatory open disclosure, Sinn Féin health spokeswoman Louise O’Reilly described the health service as overmanaged and under accountable.

“This motion and any is not an effort to punish health care and medical professionals. Rather it is to help them and patients,” she said.

“It is an attempt to begin the process of cultural change” because the experiment with voluntary open disclosure had not been successful, Ms O’Reilly added.

She said the advice given to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who was then minister for health, that open disclosure should be voluntary “has not worked”.

Honest

Ms O’Reilly said medical professionals should have a legal duty to be open and honest when things go wrong. But she said that was not confined just to the frontline staff as accountability “goes right to the top”.

She said there was plenty of evidence of legal protection for those at the top but not those on the frontline. The actions or omissions of those at the top of the HSE and Department of Health can affect far more patients than those on the frontline.

If those on the ward need to be accountable then HSE executives, hospital chief executives and senior departmental officials should equally be obliged to be accountable.

She stressed that “organisational and personal interest” cannot outweigh the interests of patients and their families.

Sinn Féin Louth TD Imelda Munster claimed the chief executive of the HSE had “given the two fingers” to the women affected by the CervicalCheck controversy and to the Minister and the Government and the health service.

She said the Minister had spoken “with forked tongue” when he spoke about mandatory disclosure because he had blocked it.