HIQA has stepped up its engagement with GPs, and their ongoing input is helping the Authority shape its revised nursing homes standards due out next year.
Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) was only established in May 2007, to drive continuous improvement in Ireland’s health and social care services. Among HIQA’s earliest standards was the National Quality Standards for Residential Care Settings for Older People in Ireland (2009), which outlined what is expected of a provider of services and what a resident, their family, a carer, or the public can expect to receive in residential care settings. Now, for the first time, the Authority is in the process of revising an existing set of standards.
According to Marie Kehoe-O’Sullivan, Director of Safety and Quality Improvement at HIQA, this revision of the standards has involved quite an intensive pre-engagement process before putting a single item on paper, which consisted of focus groups that were conducted by HIQA with staff (including GPs), residents and relatives in eight nursing homes around the country to learn what impact — good, bad or indifferent — they have had and what needed to done differently.
The 2009 Standards for Residential Care Settings deals with the areas of rights of older people, protection, health and social care needs, quality of life, staffing, the care environment, and management and governance. In addition, the standards include supplementary criteria that apply to units that specialise in the care of people with dementia.
HIQA is planning to have the final draft of the revised standards go to its Board in January next year, following which they will go to the Minister for Health for his approval. HIQA expects the revised national standards to be launched in July 2015.
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