The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) is asking the public for their feedback on its Draft National Standards for Information Management in Health and Social Care. 

The draft national standards aim to provide a roadmap to improve the quality of health and social care information and are of importance to all services and organisations that collect, use or share health care information.  

HIQA’s Director of Health Information and Standards, Rachel Flynn, said: “An individual’s health information informs all aspects of their care. Given the interconnected nature of health and social care, information is collected across a range of services and organisations and often combined for many different reasons, such as to give a complete picture of an individual’s health or to plan and manage services for the population. A system-wide approach is therefore necessary to ensure that all organisations put in place arrangements to ensure data is of high quality and treated in a confidential manner. This is essential to achieve the Sláintecare vision of one universal health service for all, providing the right care, in the right place, at the right time. Good information management practices are also essential to providing assurances on the quality of the major national repositories of data that are used to monitor diseases, manage services, inform policy-making, conduct research, and plan for future health and social care needs.

“If organisations and services work towards meeting the draft national standards, it will ultimately contribute to the delivery of safe and reliable care for everyone. In practice, this means that a health or social care professional has a comprehensive and accurate record of an individual’s health and social care history to help inform urgent, current or future care. Good information management is also necessary to manage demand for care, as accurate and timely data is necessary to effectively plan and manage services.”

The standards are set out under three principles to ensure that: 

• information management takes a human rights-based approach, which means that an organisation places an emphasis on protecting and promoting people’s rights relating to their information including their privacy and confidentiality, but also their autonomy, dignity, values, preferences and diversity;
• an organisation is accountable by having the necessary governance arrangements in place to manage information appropriately in line with relevant legislation; 
• and an organisation is responsive by taking a strategic and systematic approach to information governance including privacy and confidentiality, data quality, data security, data accessibility, and to ensure that maximum benefit is achieved from its data and information. 

HIQA invites members of the public and individuals working in services and organisations that collect, use or share health and social care information to provide feedback on the draft national standards before the consultation closes at 5pm on 19 December 2022.

Read the draft national standards and take part in the consultation at the link above.

Ends.

For further information please contact:

Marty Whelan, Head of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement

085 805 5202 / mwhelan@hiqa.ie.

Notes to the editor:

• HIQA’s principles-based framework for health and social care standards has been used in the development of the Draft National Standards for Information Management in Health and Social Care.
• The draft national standards represent a major revision and expansion of the scope of the Information Management Standards for National Health and Social Care Data Collections which were published by HIQA in 2017. The revision of the standards means that the  scope of the standards has widened to include all services and organisations that collect, use or share health and social care information.  
• Under the Health Act 2007 (and Amendments)(1), HIQA has a legislative remit to set standards for health information for the HSE, Tusla, and associated service providers and to monitor compliance with these standards. While not all such organisations are within HIQA’s remit, the standards should be used by all services and organisations that collect, use or share health and social care information to improve information management across the entire system.

Reference

1.    Health Act 2007 (Ireland). Available from: https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2007/act/23/enacted/en/html