The occurrence of adverse incidents and events within designated centres for older people and people with disabilities in Ireland are reported to the Chief Inspector of Social Services within the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). These statutory notifications, which include serious injury, outbreak of a notifiable disease and allegations of abuse, are used to inform risk-rating and regulatory monitoring approach for centres. There are currently 581 designated centres for older people and 1,194 for people with disabilities in Ireland which submitted circa 15,000 notifications in 2018. This is rich, unmined qualitative and quantitative data, offering unrivalled opportunity for secondary analyses to inform quality and safety improvements within designated centres.
This research aims to provide an overview of notifications at a national level, identify targets for quality and safety improvement initiatives, facilitate wider use and analyses of notification data, share good practice when dealing with adverse events, create reporting and risk-rating notification efficiencies, and inform notification prioritisation in practice and policy.
We will achieve this by analysing notification types and frequency; identifying determinants of adverse events; creating a data dictionary, map and public online portal; identifying and sharing good practice for actions taken in the aftermath of an event; developing a lexicon to standardise terminology for reporting notifications; and analysing the association of changes in risk profile for centres and, notification type and required timing.
The collaboration with HIQA, the Chief Inspector and the Head of Regulatory Practice Development Unit will ensure outputs are used to inform practice regarding adverse events and statutory notifications; supporting service providers in dealing with adverse events and inspectors in translating notifications into risk-ratings. This work will also maximise the analytical potential of the data, creating opportunity for social care quality and safety improvement research into the future and informing existing and emergent policy.
