As Chairperson of the Board of the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) I thank the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children for giving me the opportunity to address the Committee today. I am joined today by the Authority’s Head of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement, Marty Whelan.

HIQA operates as an independent Authority reporting to the Minister for Health and to the Minister for Children, pursuant to the Health Act 2007 and other acts of the Oireachtas. My objectives for the first three years of my tenure as its Chairperson are set out in HIQA’s Corporate Plan 2013–2015, which was approved by the Minister for Health on 12 September 2013 and laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas. I understand that copies of the Corporate Plan have been previously circulated to Members for today’s meeting.

Before discussing the Corporate Plan, I would like to give the Committee some background on myself and to outline my personal perspective in what I would like HIQA to achieve during my tenure as Chairperson.

Since qualifying as an accountant in the early 1990s I have specialised in the area of advisory services in healthcare. My first personal experience of healthcare delivery was gained while studying, and during summer holidays I worked as a care assistant in a psycho-geriatric home in the West Midlands in the UK. This experience was different for a young accountant, but it went on to help define my professional accountancy life as one specialising in healthcare consultancy.

For the past 10 years or more, I have provided financial, operational and strategic advisory services to acute, older person and primary care services throughout Ireland.
I had in fact interacted with HIQA prior to joining the Board and I have the utmost of respect for the role of the Authority and the way in which the Authority carries out its functions. I applied for the position of Chairperson because I am passionate about the need for an independent health regulator having been a care assistant and an advisor to healthcare operators.

As Chairperson of the Authority I want to ensure HIQA continues to build on its reputation and standing as a regulator. The agenda of the Authority is evolving to cover new areas on monitoring against standards which are applied in a risk-based methodology in a proportionate way.

I would like to focus today on HIQA’s Corporate Plan 2013-15, the Authority’s third Corporate Plan since the Authority was established in May 2007, and which builds on the achievements and impacts of the earlier Corporate Plans that have shaped the work of the Authority to date. The development of the Plan started in September 2012 and involved a review of the Authority’s existing Corporate Plan and legal mandate, consideration of the internal and external environments and related priorities, our learning from our work over the last six years and the challenges and opportunities facing our health and social care system both today and into the future.

HIQA’s mission is to promote sustainable improvements, safeguard people using health and social care services and support informed decisions on how services are delivered. This mission will guide and direct all of the activities of the Authority, and the Corporate Plan clearly sets out the vision to achieve this over the next three years. It also outlines the priorities that will need to be met to enable us to meet our strategic corporate objectives during this time. The Corporate Plan is the result of an extensive consultation process, which ensures we are fully conscious of the external environment in which we carry out our work, and it enables us to plan accordingly.

I would like to express my gratitude to all of those who took part in the process and I hope that the final Plan, which commits us to working with our stakeholders in a collaborative and constructive manner, has addressed all of the issues raised during the consultation. I believe that the final Plan reflects the Authority’s core values of putting people first, being fair and objective, focusing on excellence and innovation, being open and accountable and working together with internal and external stakeholders.

As the Authority’s Chief Executive, Tracey Cooper, outlined to this Committee last September, the role of the Authority is set to expand considerably over the next three years. This Corporate Plan will enable us to carry out new functions as efficiently and effectively as possible whilst prioritising areas where improvements in services are needed most and providing increasing developmental improvement support to people providing services. The Plan also provides a robust framework to ensure that we continue to carry out our existing functions to a high standard. As the work of the Authority expands, this Corporate Plan will guide the incorporation of these new functions, while ensuring that they are properly planned, are cost-effective and are adequately supported. This is particularly important at a time of economic uncertainty and ongoing reforms of the health service, which we are particularly conscious of, and these factors were taken into account during the development of this Plan.

The Corporate Plan reflects HIQA’s primary focus of improving outcomes for people using our health and social care services. One key area is the continued growth in our regulatory functions for adults and children over the coming years, some of which will happen in previously unregulated areas. This includes the registration, oversight and scrutiny across a range of health and social care services for both adults and children – including the recent commencement of the regulation of residential services for people with a disability from the 1st of November 2013, and the move towards a healthcare licensing system.

We will continue to publicly report on the safety, quality and effectiveness of health and social care services, enable the health and social care system to reduce the risk of harm and abuse to people using services, inform decision making in relation to investment and disinvestment service-based decisions and share the learning from activities to ensure continuous improvement in the planning, management and delivery of services.

As well as working with external stakeholders, successful delivery of the new Corporate Plan will also depend on a number of internal factors. We have placed particular emphasis on these within the Authority as a means of optimising the delivery of our functions in an efficient and effective way. Further development in these internal factors will enable our continued improvement in areas which include:

• having a professionally competent and supported workforce
• a robust and effective corporate governance structure
• effective planning and performance management
• ensuring our work is informed by evidence and research
• communicating in an open and responsive manner with stakeholders
• using and managing information effectively and in accordance with best practice.

These key enablers will ensure our success in carrying out our four core activities of Regulation, Supporting Improvement, Improving outcomes through information, and Health Technology Assessment (HTA). More broadly, we want to ensure that we use our talented staff and resources in the most efficient and effective way in order to have the maximum impact for people using and delivering services and to inform decision-making in a resource constrained environment. In so doing, we also aim to continue to reduce the overall burden placed on service providers wherever possible while maximising our approach to safety and quality improvement.

The Authority will continue to work with other health and social care stakeholders in this respect, and will further develop memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with other key organisations, including other regulators, to ensure that patient safety and the broader public interest are always the priority.

Following on from these core activities, the Corporate Plan also describes the outcomes that we aim to achieve for patients and people using services and the activities that we will implement in order to deliver on our statutory remit. The outcomes we aim to achieve are that:

• care is improved
• people are safeguarded
• people are informed
• policy and service decisions are informed.

Also included in the Plan are specific targets and time frames to assess and measure the delivery of our strategic objectives and through which we can be held to account. The inclusion of a one-page strategy map in the Plan provides a concise illustration of the Authority’s strategy to achieve its goals up to 2015, while a far more detailed breakdown of the outcomes, core activities, strategic objectives and key enablers is also provided in the Plan which covers the specific types of work that we will be doing to deliver the Plan – and make a difference.

As I have mentioned, the development of this Corporate Plan took place in the context of a challenging economic environment and an ongoing programme of major system reforms in the health and social care sectors. It is likely that many of these changes will impact on the work of the Authority, and this Plan will therefore need to be adaptable so that it remains relevant to the people who use health and social care services and ensures that HIQA’s vision to drive high quality and safe care for people using these services is being carried out in an efficient, effective, real and relevant manner.

It should be noted that much of what is included in the Corporate Plan 2013–2015 is dependent on the implementation of Government policy.

I thank the Committee for the opportunity to discuss the Corporate Plan today. I look forward to answering your questions and hearing any feedback that members may have and to continuing to work with you over the coming years to collectively drive improvement in our health and social care services.