(NAHQ: Glenview, IL) -- Over the past three years, Ireland’s public health care system, the Health Service Executive (HSE), has been making health care quality and patient safety issues a critical part of its mission. In 2007, the HSE issued a Quality and Risk Management Standard, setting the criteria for implementing an integrated quality, safety, and risk management system. Its aim was to provide a common set of requirements that applied across all service providers to ensure that health, personal, and social services were safe and of acceptable quality.

To accomplish this goal, a fundamental change in the way services are delivered was required, putting patients at the heart of service planning and delivery, and developing systems to ensure that the HSE provided the most appropriate care, every time, for each patient. In 2009, a framework was developed to implement the 22 criteria identified in the original standard. This framework included 69 steps to follow to be in compliance.

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