National Incident Management System (NIMS)

National Incident Management System (NIMS) is the principal source of national data on incident activity for the Irish health and social care 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 DoH 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 patients including dangerous occurrences and complaints  Management of incident reviews  Recording of review conclusions  Recording of review recommendations  Tracking recommendations to closure  Multiple reporting and analytical tools which could be pointed at all captured data  Facilitates reporting and analysis of patient safety incident data captured  Facilitates reporting and analysis of review conclusions and contributory factors  Facilitates reporting and analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs) as set out in the HSE Service Plan  Facilitates the analysis of safety performance to inform risk initiatives.

Note: NIMS also captures incidents involving health care workers (HCW) and members of the public and property damage. It also is used to manage claims arising from all incident types.

Purpose: To maintain and provide the national database of patient safety incident data that meets the needs of data users in the health and social care sector (including quality and patient safety clinical teams, management, policy makers, risk/health and safety managers, facilities staff, and researchers) whilst also supporting effective claims and risk management by the HSE and the SCA. Note comment above re: Tusla.

Coverage: NIMS is used by all the public health and social care service and is provided to certain private hospitals as part of SafetNet. The areas covered include:  all Hospital Groups, acute hospitals  the CHO’s and Voluntary Community (S. 38’s) healthcare sectors  National Ambulance Service  HSE Corpor