HIQA announces consultation on draft national standard

HIQA has published for consultation a draft national standard on how to collect accurate information about who you are, for use in delivering health and social care.

Professor Jane Grimson, Director of Health Information with HIQA, said: “Currently there is no standardised or agreed guidance on the collection of demographic data. There are real risks to patient safety and welfare because there is a lack of consistency in how people are identified across our health and social care system. For example, there can be significant variations in how names are recorded leading to the risk of misidentification and putting patients at risk.”

“Having the right information recorded that correctly identifies an individual is essential as it is key to ensuring that each person receives the right care at the right time. This information is also vital for health and social care professionals so that they can make the right decisions about your care, while at the same time ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of your information.”

“There are two essential elements to ensuring correct identification of individuals: a unique number and an associated standard set of information, such as name, date of birth, and gender,” Professor Grimson said. “The forthcoming Health Information Bill is expected to introduce legislation to enable the introduction of the unique number and the document we are launching for consultation today sets out what that standard set of information should be.”

The benefits for people are safer, better care for patients from having accurate, complete information available when it is needed; the removal of the need to provide demographic details again and again on each visit to the health or social care service provider and reduced time wasting as the information will only be collected once.

The benefits for GPs will include enabling the collection of more accurate and consistent demographic data and improved reliability of information; it will assist in more complete patient identification, therefore preventing duplication or misidentification errors, and less duplication of testing/prescribing and will allow information to be exchanged between information systems, therefore reducing administrative tasks.

Hospitals will also benefit from having more complete and accurate information on which to base potentially life-critical clinical decisions; reductions in significant levels of duplication of administrative effort, less wasting of patients’ time and resources and hence greater efficiencies, and more accountability and improved communications.

“Having information that is complete and accurate about each person will reduce duplication in medical records, appointments, testing and prescribing. This results in time-saving for the patient and administration and cost savings for the system,” Professor Grimson said.

HIQA has begun a public consultation on the draft National Standard Demographic Dataset and Guidance, which was developed in consultation with the Irish College of General Practitioners Information Technology Group, and is interested in getting feedback from the public, GPs, hospitals, health and social care professionals and anyone involved in the collection of people’s private health information.

This document is available for public consultation. In this way, the public, service users and service providers have an opportunity to provide feedback and contribute to the development process. The closing date for receipt of comments is 5pm on Friday 12 April 2013.

Your comments can be submitted by completing the online consultation feedback form or alternatively downloading and completing the consultation feedback form, both accessible from www.hiqa.ie.

Further Information: 

Sinead Whooley, Communications Manager, Health Information and Quality Authority
Tel: 01 8147488/ 087 9221941 email: swhooley@hiqa.ie

Notes to the Editor: 

• HIQA has a statutory remit to develop standards, evaluate information and make recommendations about deficiencies on health information as outlined in the Health Act 2007. One key deficiency which has been identified, by both the Authority and a number of stakeholders, is the absence of a national standard demographic dataset across the Irish health and social care sector.
• The ability to uniquely identify individuals is imperative to provide quality and safe care. HIQA has recognised the importance of being able to uniquely identify individuals and has recommended the introduction of an individual health identifier.
• The lack of a national demographic dataset has resulted in each health and social care provider designing its own rules for the data items it wishes to collect on each individual. This results in varying approaches to the data items collected and the formats of same, with each data item having the possibility for many permutations and combinations.
• For example, the name McGrath can be collected as McGrat, Mc Grath, Macgrath and so forth, leading to a potential for duplication and / or misidentification. It is therefore crucial to have a single national standard for collection of such important demographic data in order to ensure standardised, accurate identification of each individual.