Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 21 February 2024
158. Deputy Colm Burke asked the Minister for Health if he will invest in appropriate communication technologies to ensure that hospital e-discharges are delivered using Healthmail to support a standardised national approach to electronic discharges, such a change would dramatically improve patient care and improve efficiency both within hospitals and community settings; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8194/24]
View answerThe introduction of a standardised national approach to electronic discharges would certainly improve the timeliness and quality of discharges from one care setting to another. Indeed, electronic discharges are already deployed at a number of our larger acute hospitals. The communication technology is already well established with discharge information being issued as a structured message via Healthlink, meaning it can be ingested into downstream systems, most GP practice systems. The use of Healthmail instead of Healthlink, whilst speeding up the process of issuing discharge summaries by avoiding the need to use post, would not help to standardise the process for preparation or indeed the content of discharge summaries. The fact that we have different processes and systems within existing hospitals - where discharge information must be collated from in order to produce the discharge summary - is the real challenge here. My department has engaged with the HSE on this subject before because of the obvious potential to improve patient care and improve efficiency both within hospitals and community settings. I can assure the deputy the we will continue to support opportunities with the HSE to adopt electronic discharge capabilities across the health system, including information on medications, which is critical to safe patient care. Indeed, there is already funding provided within the national service plan for 2024 to support hospital sites that can implement electronic discharge capabilities, leveraging the existing Healthlink communications technology. Structured data from electronic discharges will also form an important part of the national shared care record, the technology for which the HSE is going to market for this year.
