National Incident Management System (NIMS)
State Claims Agency, Department of Health
2003
To maintain and provide the national database of incident and claim activity that meets the needs of data users in the healthcare sector (including policy makers, management, risk/health and safety managers, facilities staff, clinical teams and researchers) whilst also supporting effective claims and risk management by the HSE and the SCA.
In excess of 1,500 users to date across multiple Delegated State authorities (DSAs), including:
- Fifty-two acute hospitals
- Over 2,600 community healthcare locations across Mental Health, National Ambulance Service, Social Care, Primary Care and Health and Wellbeing Division
- Over 350 Tusla locations.
National Incident Management System (NIMS) is the principal source of national data on incident and claim activity for the Irish health service. It has been designated as the primary system for end-to-end risk management of all incidents (capture, investigations and reporting) both by the Department of Health and the HSE. It is an end-to-end risk management web-based system and its purpose is as follows:
- capture of incidents (including Serious Reportable Events); involving staff members, patients (clinical and general), members of the public, property, dangerous occurrences and complaints
- management of investigations
- recording of investigation conclusions
- recording of recommendations
- tracking recommendations to closure
- management of the claims and litigation processes
- multiple reporting and analytical tools which could be pointed at all captured data
- facilitates reporting and analysis of patient safety, staff safety, members of public, property damage, dangerous occurrences and complaints
- facilitates reporting and analysis of investigative conclusions and contributory factors
- facilitates reporting and analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs) as set out in the HSE National Service Plan
- facilitates the analysis of safety performance to inform risk initiatives.
Includes demographic details, locations, incident type, division, specialties, procedures/medications, injuries, outcomes, severity ratings, contributory factors, actions taken/planned and values e.g. birth rates, employee headcount etc..
HSE, HSE Section 38 funded agencies and Tusla.
NIMS is a confidential, highly secure web-based IT system that links hospitals and other health and social care enterprises to a core database. Information is entered to the system locally either by paper-based National Incident Report Forms (NIRF) or electronic point of occurrence reporting (ePofO) and subsequently reviewed and investigated by the risk manager using NIMS.
Available to NIMS users via the systems ‘News and Announcements’ Page.
Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) Classification System and aligned to the World Health Organization (WHO) Conceptual Framework for the International Classification for Patient Safety.
Approximately 160,000 records created on average annually.
Monthly, quarterly, annually and as per request.
Each healthcare enterprise has access to its own data in order to identify emerging trends for risk management purposes, media requests and parliamentary questions. External requests can be forwarded to either NIMS@hse.ie or the SCA Data Services Team at stateclaims@ntma.ie for review.
No
Future development includes: