May 2009
Against a background of overall improvement in hospital hugiene nationally, some hospitals struggle to keep up with the pace of progress.
To drive improvement and to narrow the spread of performance, the National Hospitals Office of the HSE is applying a "targeted intervention" to hospitals which it has identified as making slower progress. The principles underpinning the intervention are as follows:
- Accountability - being clear about who is responsible for what and to whom they must report. Clear accountability is a fundamental element of good governance for safe and high quality healthcare
- Sharing of learning across peers - ensuring that good practice from exemplary hospitals is spread across all hospitals and in particular across hospitals making slower progress. Sharing of learning from peers is recognized as a strategy for improving performance of teams and organizations.
The elements of the targeted intervention are as follows:
- For hospitals making slower progress, a series of meetings took place between those with responsibility for hygiene services (including Hospital Managers/CEOs), Hospital Network Managers and the National Director for the National Hospitals Office to discuss the results of the HIQA reviews. Barriers to progress and strategies to overcome these barriers were examined
- Arrangements were then made for these hygiene teams at hospitals making slower progress to visit hospitals with strongest hygiene services performance so as to learn from their good practice
- In response, those fourteen hospitals which are making slower progress have developed hygiene service quality improvement plans which will be implemented through 2009. To strengthen accountability, these plans available to read or download below. These documents are locally produced and locally owned plans which set out the "who, what, when and how" of measures hospitals will implement to improve hygiene services. The implementation of these plans will be overseen by Hospital Network Managers.
Read or download these hospital's QIPs at the links below
