30 September 2022

FODO Ireland responds to Open Disclosure consultation

FODO Ireland has responded to the government's consultation on a draft policy framework for open disclosure in the health and social care sector.

The consultation proposes new measures for all healthcare providers, educators and regulators for an open, consistent, compassionate and timely approach to communicating with patients and families when something goes wrong with their care.

The response, jointly from FODO Ireland and Optometry Ireland, states the sector's strong support for the principles of open disclosure as a critical element of professional practice and in building patient confidence and continuous quality improvement in service provision. However, it also opposed some of the proposals, which would be disproportionate to the risk and level of harm to patients within primary eye care.

Citing evidence that the levels of clinical risk in primary eye care are recognised as low, the primary eye care response proposed that:

• the support providers are required to provide to patients and staff following an open disclosure incident needs to be proportionate to the risk/harm of the care and the care setting. The potential costs of the current proposals are not proportional to risk and would be unworkable in primary eye care 
• It should be possible to provide the 'low-level response' as part of the same episode of care in which the incident occurred to make things easier and speedier for the patient, who would still have the right to escalate further
• An annual report from each provider would be disproportionate and a waste of the Department of Health and providers' time. Instead, we proposed that CORU would be better placed to report to the Minister for Health annually on complaints in which Open Disclosure was not correctly applied and how this was remedied.

Read the consultation documentation.

Read FODO Ireland's joint submission.