Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Act 2023

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Failure to contact patient or relevant person (or both) for purpose of open disclosure of notifiable incident

20. (1) Where for the purposes of section 5 (1), and arranging a notifiable incident disclosure meeting, the health services provider concerned is unable to contact a patient on the basis of the contact information provided to it by the patient, the provider shall take all steps reasonably open to it to establish contact with the patient in order to comply with section 5 (1).

(2) Where for the purposes of section 5 (1), and arranging a notifiable incident disclosure meeting with a relevant person, the health services provider concerned is unable to contact him or her on the basis of the contact information provided to it by the patient or the relevant person, the provider shall take all steps reasonably open to it to establish contact with the relevant person in order to comply with section 5 (1).

(3) Where for the purposes of section 5 (1), and arranging a notifiable incident disclosure meeting with a patient and a relevant person, the health services provider concerned is unable to contact either or both of them on the basis of the contact information provided to it by the patient or the relevant person, the provider shall take all steps reasonably open to it to establish contact with either or both of them in order to comply with section 5 (1).

(4) A health services provider shall—

(a) set out, in a statement in writing, the steps taken by it to establish contact with a patient, a relevant person or, as the case may be, both of them,

(b) include, without prejudice to the generality of paragraph (a), the contact information, referred to in subsection (1), or as the case may be, subsection (2), provided to the provider,

(c) sign the statement referred to in paragraph (a) and shall specify the date of signing, and

(d) keep, in records referred to in section 25 , the statement referred to in paragraph (a), which has been signed in accordance with paragraph (c) together with any document (or any copy or record of a document) used by the provider to contact the patient or relevant person (or both of them) and any record of the steps referred to in paragraph (a).

(5) Where, at any time after the signing of the statement referred to in subsection (4) —

(a) the health services provider makes contact with the patient or relevant person, or as the case may be, both of them, or

(b) the patient or relevant person makes, or as the case may be both of them make, contact with the health services provider,

the health services provider shall hold a notifiable incident disclosure meeting in order to make the open disclosure of the notifiable incident after that contact has been made.

(6) Nothing in this section shall operate to prevent the making of a notification under Part 4 in respect of the notifiable incident concerned.

(7) In this section, “contact information” means information provided to a health services provider by the patient or a relevant person (or both of them) for the purpose of permitting the provider to contact the patient or relevant person (or both of them) as it may require when the patient is no longer in the care of the provider or has left the premises on which the health service concerned is provided to that patient.