HIQA concerned over patients’ safety ‘throughout Tallaght hospital’

SAFETY concerns expressed by the state’s health watchdog about the country’s busiest hospital do not stop at its emergency department, it has emerged.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has launched an investigation into the quality and safety of care given to patients at Tallaght Hospital in Dublin.

It is now understood that HIQA is concerned about the entire patient journey through the hospital system.

The authority has had concerns for some time in relation to the quality and safety of the care provided to patients requiring acute admission to the hospital and care at its emergency department.

It had previously sought assurances in relation to how the board and executive of the hospital were governing and managing these risks.

“We have serious concerns about a patient’s journey, not just at acute admission, but how it is managed throughout the hospital,” a spokesperson for HIQA said yesterday.

On Friday night the board of the authority decided to launch a statutory investigation in accordance with section nine of the Health Act 2007 into the quality, safety and governance of the care of patients requiring acute admission to the hospital.

The terms of reference and membership of the investigation team will be published when finalised, a process that is expected to take up to 10 days.

As was the case in previous investigations by HIQA the terms of reference are expected to be broadly based.

It is also expected that the authority’s final report will not just focus on Tallaght but on the provision of acute hospital care nationally.

The spokesperson said it was not yet possible to say when a final report on the investigation could be expected.

Last year, the hospital was subject to another investigation after it emerged that thousands of X-rays had gone unreported to consultants while many referral letters from GPs had not been processed.

The hospital admitted that one patient had died as a result of a delayed X-ray diagnosis.

Last week, a coroner said Tallaght sounded like a very dangerous place to be for anybody, let alone a sick patient.

Dublin county coroner, Dr Kieran Geraghty, was responding to comments about conditions at the hospital by an emergency consultant at the inquest into the death of a patient who had been left in a corridor because of a bed shortage.