merrion street

The Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly, T.D. today (Wednesday 22^nd June 2011) welcomed the publication of the HIQA "Report and Recommendations on Patient Referrals from General Practice to Outpatient and Radiology Services, including the National Standard for Patient Referral Information."

The Report sets out a number of recommendations to improve the quality and safety of the referral system for patients to outpatient and radiology services. The HIQA Report also includes a recommendation for a new national standard for the provision and communication of information between General Practitioners and hospitals."Following feedback on the experience with the piloting of the patient referral template by the HSE I will consider mandating the proposed national standard for patient referral information. I will be asking the newly appointed head of the Special Delivery Unit, (Dr Martin Connor), for his views on how to ensure that this excellent work done by HIQA can best be integrated into plans and priorities to tackle patient access to emergency, elective, outpatient and diagnostic services. Uniformity of care across our health service is a key objective and an integral part of that must be a uniform approach to the critical area of patient referral and how this issue is dealt with," the Minister said.