A new group has been established by the Minister for Health to draw up proposals for the licensing of all healthcare providers in the State including public and private hospitals, diagnostic centres and plastic surgery and fertility clinics.
The Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance has also been asked to make recommendations to ensure there is more effective reporting of adverse clinical events in hospitals and greater accountability within the healthcare system for patient safety.
The commission, which includes representatives of the medical and nursing professions as well as patients, is chaired by Dr Deirdre Madden, a law lecturer at University College Cork who also chaired the organs inquiry. +The group will have 18 months to complete its work.
Announcing the commission yesterday, Mary Harney said the Lourdes hospital inquiry and others had underlined the need for a broad review of patient safety and quality right across the health system.
"I am determined that we learn the lessons from instances where patients have been harmed."
She said it had been a Government decision to establish the commission and she rejected the suggestion that it was already clear from reports what needed to be done.
"We have never had a group in Ireland looking at how you can, in different healthcare settings, look at minimising adverse events. . . we have never looked at licensing or accreditation."
She said that, since becoming Minister for Health, she had been struck by the number of adverse events which were occurring. While there were no figures for the Republic, internationally it was reported that 10 per cent of hospital experiences can result in an adverse event. In some cases the consequences can be fatal.
We had to minimise the possibility of people experiencing adverse events and look at practical measures that could be put in place to do this, Ms Harney said.
Dr Madden said the commission would seek submissions from the public and interested parties and would also analyse what was being done in other jurisdictions.
Dr Philip Crowley, deputy chief medical officer at the Department of Health, who has also been appointed to the commission, said it was envisaged that agreed standards would in the future have to be met by healthcare providers before they could be licensed to open for business.
Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr Liam Twomey, said the Government was failing patients by not accepting that a patient safety authority, as proposed by Fine Gael and Labour, was urgently needed.
The announcement of a commission to examine the area was "a blatant attempt to kick to touch on the issue", he said.