Sir, – This week, to much fanfare, the HSE has been publicising its “Open Disclosure Week”. It is therefore an opportune time to look back and reflect on the role and actions of both the HSE and the Department of Health over the last few years and how they deal with failings in our health service.
In 2015, the then minister for health Leo Varadkar removed the mandatory element from the open disclosure legislation on the advice of the then chief medical officer. This followed extensive lobbying by vested interest groups.
The fallout from the subsequent Cervical Check scandal resulted in Dr Gabriel Scally criticising the Department of Health’s (voluntary) open disclosure policy. Regrettably, the media and politicians failed to go back and question the two main architects of the disastrous 2015 voluntary open disclosure legislation.
Subsequent to the Scally report, and indeed the new Patient Safety Bill, Mr Justice Charles Meenan published a report in 2020 on medical negligence reform. Among other recommendations this report recommends making it a criminal offence to “alter patients medical records (with the intent to mislead and deceive)”. Two years on this report is still gathering dust in the Department of Health.
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Again politicians and media have failed to question the current Minister for Health on when or if he intends implementing the Meenan report recommendations.
Given the Department of Health’s history and its ongoing failure to implement the Meenan report recommendations, it is hard to have much confidence in the commitment of either the HSE or the Department of Health to an honest and open approach to failings in our health service. Rather than engaging in PR stunt weeks around imagined “open disclosure”, a statutory duty of candour imposing a legal obligation to disclose, along with the full implementation of the Meenan report recommendations, are required.
Irish patients have a right to full and timely disclosure when failings occur, this right needs to be enshrined in law and there needs to be severe consequences for non-disclosure. Most importantly, these consequences must not solely apply to frontline workers but to senior management in the HSE and Department whose policies have effectively been responsible for frontline staff being unable to disclose. – Yours, etc,
RUARY MARTIN,
Sandyford,
Dublin 18.