Many of the risks within the country's emergency departments would be significantly reduced if recommendations previously made by HIQA had been implemented, the chief executive of the health safety watchdog has claimed.
In an address to the annual conference of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) in Tullamore, Co Offaly on Saturday Phelim Quinn said the evolving governance and management arrangements in the newly-established hospital groups and community health organisations had "the potential to leave services and patients vulnerable".
“We need to see evidence that the emerging management and governance arrangements provide clarity on accountability arrangements with the new groups and robustness in clinical governance arrangement.”
Mr Quinn said HIQA had been asked by a number of “interested parties” to take account of the impact of its regulatory measures in the area of community-based, long term residential settings on acute services.
However he said it was not in the gift of HIQA to “cherry pick or to promote targets in one service area over another”.
“When we come across significant non-compliance issues in residential care centres, I believe we are legally and morally bound to act for the protection and safeguarding of vulnerable residents.”
Mr Quinn told the conference the spread of infections in hospitals was not just a resource issue.
He said hospital consultants had a vital leadership role in improving prevention of infection practices in hospitals.
“We all have a duty to fight hospital acquired infections, including the receptionist, the porter, the nurse and the consultant. At times in conversations with people working in the service these issues are characterised as flippant and unimportant - they are not.”
Mr Quinn described the report that HIQA had carried out into Portlaoise hospital earlier this year as “a watershed moment in the Irish health system”.
He said the report shone a light not only on the hospital in Portlaoise but on the healthcare system as a whole.
He said that everyone working in the healthcare system must work to implement recommendations set out in this and other HIQA reports.
