Ireland | Patient Safety Act 2023: your guide to compliance
Your practical guide to NIMS reporting obligations, Open Disclosure requirements, and building a compliant patient safety governance process under the Patient Safety Act 2023.
Healthcare
Patient safety
20 minute read
Ireland
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Understand your obligations under the Patient Safety Act 2023
The Patient Safety Act 2023 commenced on 26 September 2024. For the first time, every Irish healthcare organisation — public hospitals, voluntary hospitals, private providers, and community care services — is legally required to report notifiable patient safety incidents to HIQA or the Mental Health Commission within seven calendar days of becoming aware of them.
That seven-day clock does not pause for weekends or bank holidays. For many organisations, meeting it consistently requires a fundamental change to how incident recording, escalation, and governance works. This guide gives you a clear, practical framework for getting there.
Know exactly where your organisation stands
Whether you are just starting your compliance review or refining a process already in place, this guide gives you the language to brief your board, the framework to assess your current systems, and a practical checklist to identify where the gaps are before your next HIQA or MHC inspection.
Key takeaways — what you'll learn
Exactly what the Act requires
the specific obligations under the Patient Safety Act 2023, including what counts as a notifiable incident, the seven-day NIMS reporting window, and the strengthened Open Disclosure requirements now carrying statutory force
How the NIMS reporting process works in practice
a step-by-step guide to the National Incident Management System, the challenges most organisations face meeting the seven-day deadline, and what a reliable internal escalation process looks like
What good compliance looks like end-to-end
the four components of a NIMS-ready incident management process, from fast accurate incident capture to board-level dashboards showing real-time notification status
How to assess your organisation's readiness
a 16-question compliance checklist across incident capture, categorisation, NIMS submission, audit trail, and Open Disclosure
How technology supports your compliance process
what a NIMS-aligned patient safety platform actually does, and how it removes the manual bottlenecks that make the seven-day deadline difficult to meet consistently
Take action before your next inspection
The Act is already in force. HIQA and the MHC have enforcement powers for organisations that fail to notify on time. Download the guide, work through the compliance checklist with your team, and identify your priority areas before they become inspection findings.
