New figures show that the number of claims against hospitals for clinical errors and other incidents has risen each year for the last five years.
Last year, 105,424 incidents were reported, including almost 50,000 relating to clinical care.
It compares with 100,930 incidents reported in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2017, there were 79,403 claims against hospitals.
The data is from the State Claims Agency which manages claims in relation to clinical negligence.
The incidents can include wrong medications, wrong dosage, slips, and falls, and more serious incidents of alleged failures in care including delayed diagnosis.
The data is broken down for the seven hospital groups, with the largest amount of claims reported by the Ireland East hospital group with 26,393 claims last year.
The group spans 11 hospitals including the Mater and St Vincent’s in Dublin, the National Maternity Hospital, and several regional hospitals.
The information was obtained following a parliamentary question to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly by Peadar Tóibín, Leader of Aontú.
Deputy Tóibín said there had been a massive increase in the number of adverse incidents in hospitals over the last number of years, up by over 30%.
He said that for each incident, there was a negative outcome for patients.
The HSE Service Plan for this year states that the implementation of the HSE Patient Safety Strategy 2019-2024 will assess the quality and safety of services.
It will also address the major causes of harm in the provision of care and enable staff to build the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to drive quality and safety improvement.
In his parliamentary reply to Mr. Tóibín, the Minister for Health said that the SCA does not release data into the public domain on incidents at the individual hospital level.
He said to do so would effectively provide a league table of hospitals and could cause the public to draw false and unwarranted assumptions in relation to the clinical performance of an individual hospital in the absence of further relevant contextual information.
News courtesy: RTE