HSE Performance Committee meeting minutes 9 January 2025

Committee Members Present

Brendan Whelan (Chair), Tim Hynes, Matt Walsh, Lily Collison and Kenneth Mealy

HSE Executive Attendance

Sonya Cotter (A/ND Planning and Performance), Damien McCallion (CTTO), Colm Henry (CCO), Eithne Fox (AND HR), Grace Rothwell (ND Access and Integration), Pat Healy (ND National Services), Tony Canavan (REO West and North West), Orla Treacy (Performance), Elaine Kilroe (AND Enterprise Risk Management), Dara Purcell (Corporate Secretary), Niamh Drew (Deputy Corporate Secretary), Patricia Perry (Office of the Board).

Minutes reflect the order in which items were considered and are numbered in accordance with the original agenda.  All performance/activity data used in this document refers to the latest information available at the time.

The Committee held a private session to review the agenda, the relevant papers and approach to conducting the meeting.

The Chair advised that this was the first full meeting of the Committee, and that meetings held in November and December 2024 related to the National Service Plan 2025.

2.1 Declarations of Interest

No conflicts of interest were declared.

2.2 Minutes

The Committee approved the minutes of 22 November and 10 December 2024.

HSE officials joined the meeting

The Chair of the Committee welcomed all HSE officials and advised that the Committee members had reviewed and noted the papers received relating to agenda items:

• Item 3.1 National Performance Report - November Data, Key Messages Briefing, and Supplementary NPR Report; and
• Item 5 SLT Monthly Reports: CPO Report; Access and Integration Report including Monthly Disabilities Report; CTTO Report; and National Services and Schemes Report

The Chair advised that the Committee had agreed that the meeting would concentrate on discussions with officials on the nature of the information being presented and how it could be enhanced to best serve the Committee’s remit, rather than discussing the papers.

The Committee outlined the linkage of the Performance Committee and the Strategy and Reform Committee with the Chairs of each Committee being members of both Committees, and that the responsibilities of the Committee are to review performance against the National Service Plan on behalf of the Board and to develop and refine performance reporting.

It was noted that the commentary reporting from the SLT was varied, and each SLT member provided an update to the Committee on their perspective of issues and challenges with regards to reporting to the Committee. The need to identify the real KPIs with commentary and the lack of good IT systems to report on community operations was highlighted, which the Committee were advised is being addressed, and the relationship between the National Performance Report and the Board Strategic Scorecard needs to be determined.

It was agreed that the Committee will refine what is required to be presented at meetings and will provide clarity to the SLT on this.

AND Enterprise Risk joined the meeting

The Committee noted the Q3 2024 Corporate Risk Register extract and accompanying metric report.

The AND Enterprise Risk outlined the best use of Committee time from a risk function perspective, noting that there is a discipline in place in reporting, due to the Code of Practice.

The linkage between Performance Reporting and Risk Management and the linkage between the Committee and the Audit & Risk Committee was discussed and it was agreed that the Chairs of the Performance Committee, the Strategy & Reform Committee and the Audit & Risk Committee would meet to discuss this.

AND Enterprise Risk left the meeting

CCO joined the meeting

4.1 Lens of Quality and Safety - CCO Report

The CCO briefed the Committee on a number of themes in relation to quality and patient safety in relation to the Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) Independent Review; the Patient Safety Act; Maternity safety; National Screening Services (NSS), which were noted by the Committee.

The Committee discussed the challenge of dealing with issues that came under the remit of the former Safety & Quality Committee, which now fall within the remit of the Performance Committee and Audit & Risk Committee. The CCO highlighted the importance of reporting and escalating specific quality and patient safety events to the Board Sub-Committee and the CEO. The Chair advised that he would speak further with the CCO to ensure that no gaps are created as a result of the change.

The Committee discussed how improvements can be made in the healthcare system by learning from incidents and highlighted the need to build in capacity redundancy in hospitals and the need to ensure that regionalisation does not result in inappropriate variations of service management and delivery. It was also noted that there is a need for time to be allocated to undertake mandatory training in staff schedules by management.

No matters arose under this item.

The meeting ended at 2pm.

Terms of Reference: Planning and Performance Committee