Serious incidents recorded by HCS (FOI)

Request

Could you please provide, for the last three year period (broken down by year):

A

The number of serious incidents recorded in Health and Social Services (HCS)?

B

The length of time taken from the time of each incident occurring to the final investigation being completed and reported?

C

The number of serious incidents that resulted in the death of a patient?

D

The number of serious incidents that resulted in death that were subsequently the subject of a coroner’s inquest?

E

The number of other recorded incidents which were not managed under the ‘Serious Incident’ policy that related to a patient’s death?

F

Copies of both the ‘Serious Incident’ policy as well as the standard ‘Incident Reporting’ policies?

Response

A

B

Serious incidents are not always identified on the date that they occurred and as many are multifactorial there is not always a specific incident date. In this case the date of reporting the incident will be used.

It should be noted that as per the policy, there are different levels of Serious Incident and they have different recommended timescales for completion.

C

Serious Incident investigations are not commenced solely as a result of the death of a patient / service user. In order to protect the privacy of patients, as this number is fewer than five, this information is exempt under Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

D

As in question C above, in order to protect the privacy of patients, this information is exempt under Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011. Any serious incident that resulted in the death of a patient would be reported to the Deputy Viscount and result in a coroner’s inquest.

E

It is estimated that to review the patient records related to deaths occurring in hospital, as there are approximately 300 per year, would far exceed the time allowed under the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014

F

Copies of the policies can be viewed at the following links:

Patient safety learning event policy
Policy and procedure for the management of serious incidents

Article applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.