Irish Database of Statutory Notifications from Social Care

Data Collection Type
National data collections of health and social care in Ireland
Organisation

Health Information and Quality Authority
(HIQA).

Year established

2020

Statement of purpose

The LENS (LEarning from Statutory Notifications in Social Care) Project is a
HIQA initiative to compile statutory notification data into an analysable database
and to use these data to inform quality and safety improvements in social care services.
The LENS Project is funded by Health Research Board’s Secondary Data Analysis Project
Grant [SDAP-2019-005] and co-funded by HIQA.
The database includes notifications received from specified social care services,
primarily residential centres for older persons and people with disabilities.

Coverage (geographical and temporal)

Republic of Ireland.

Data from 2013 to 2020 is currently available and data is added on a yearly basis.

Description/Summary

The Chief Inspector in HIQA is responsible for regulating nursing homes and residential services for people with disabilities (collectively referred to herein as designated centres). Among the regulatory requirements of designated centres is the reporting of incidents and adverse events that occur in their services, to the Chief Inspector. Some events are required to be reported within three days (for example, serious injury, outbreak of disease) and others are reported every three months (for example, pattern of theft or burglary, use of restrictive practices).

Data users

Residents of social care services; advocates; health researchers; regulatory agencies.

Data content

Any information relevant to the regulatory requirement to submit statutory notifications in accordance with regulations for the care and welfare of people living in nursing homes and residential disability services.

Data dictionary

There is a data dictionary available for the open access version: https://www.hiqa.ie/sites/default/files/2021-02/Database-of-Statutory-Notifications-from-Social-Care-Open-Access_Data-Dictionary.pdf

National-level identifier variables

It is a requirement that there is no personally identifiable information submitted for the dataset.

Equity stratifiers

N/A.

Data collection methodology

Designated centres for older people and people with a disability are required to submit notifications to the Chief Inspector in HIQA under the Health Act 2007 and associated regulations.

Clinical coding scheme

N/A.

Size of national collection

80,000

Publication frequency

Yearly.

Accessing data

Open access is available online here: https://www.hiqa.ie/areas-we-work/Database-of-Statutory-Notifications

The full-version is only available to HIQA staff internally or by request to lens@hiqa.ie

Open data portal access

No.

Email contact
Telephone contact