Parliamentary questions

617. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether any formal escalation threshold exists where repeated breaches of ambulance allocation KPIs trigger mandatory review by senior HSE management, the National Director of the National Ambulance Service, or the Department of Health. [41141/26]

618. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether delays in ambulance allocation are linked to any retrospective clinical review process where serious deterioration, cardiac arrest, death, or adverse patient outcome subsequently occurs. [41142/26]

619. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the National Ambulance Service records the duration of time for which no ambulance resource is immediately available for dispatch to a PURPLE or RED category emergency call. [41143/26]

620. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether any internal audit, governance review, or risk assessment has examined the patient safety implications of emergency calls exceeding ambulance allocation KPI thresholds. [41144/26]

621. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether repeated breaches of PURPLE and RED allocation targets are reported to the HSE Board, National Risk Committee, or Department of Health through any formal governance reporting structure. [41145/26]

622. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether ambulance allocation delays are incorporated into any enterprise risk scoring methodology within the HSE or National Ambulance Service. [41146/26]

623. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether any review has been undertaken into the appropriateness of the current ambulance allocation KPI targets of 60% for PURPLE calls and 75% for RED calls. [41147/26]

624. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the HSE considers it acceptable from a patient safety perspective that approximately 17% of PURPLE emergency calls and 21% of RED emergency calls exceeded national ambulance allocation time thresholds in 2025. [41148/26]

625. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether every ambulance allocation delay beyond the PURPLE 60-second and RED 180-second thresholds is automatically logged within any NAS governance, quality assurance, patient safety, or incident management system; and if so, to provide details. [41176/26]

626. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether repeated breaches of ambulance allocation KPIs at local, regional, or national level trigger any formal escalation mechanism to senior HSE management, the HSE Board, or the Department of Health. [41177/26]

627. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether any adverse clinical outcome review, morbidity review, mortality review, or patient harm assessment process examines whether delayed ambulance allocation formed a contributory factor in patient outcomes. [41178/26]

628. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the National Ambulance Service maintains any internal threshold defining what constitutes an extreme or critical ambulance allocation delay for governance or patient-safety purposes. [41179/26]

629. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether ambulance allocation delays are monitored by individual call duration bands including delays exceeding 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or longer. [41180/26]

630. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether any internal reports, dashboards, governance papers, board reports, risk reports, or performance reviews since 2020 have identified ambulance allocation delays as a patient-safety concern. [41181/26]

631. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the HSE has conducted any analysis correlating ambulance allocation delays with staffing shortages, ambulance availability, emergency department overcrowding, or hospital offload delays. [41182/26]

632. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether any external body other than IAED or PHECC has independently reviewed National Ambulance Service dispatch performance, governance, or KPI compliance since 2020. [41183/26]

633. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the National Ambulance Service records the longest ambulance allocation delay experienced for PURPLE and RED calls each year. [41184/26]

634. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the HSE considers compliance with ambulance allocation KPIs to constitute a patient-safety issue, an operational performance issue, or both. [41185/26]

635. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health to provide the full list of data fields recorded within any centralised HSE database, case-management system, spreadsheet, or reporting structure used for the administration of the Treatment Abroad Scheme. [41201/26]

636. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the treatment abroad scheme records procedure categories using standardised coding systems; if so, to specify those systems. [41202/26]

637. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the treatment abroad scheme records the clinical indication or diagnosis associated with approved treatments abroad. [41203/26]

638. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the treatment abroad scheme records destination hospital, provider, and jurisdiction for each approved case. [41204/26]

639. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether the treatment abroad scheme records estimated approved cost and final reimbursed expenditure separately for each approved case. [41205/26]

640. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health the number of internal audits, external audits, Comptroller and Auditor General reviews, or governance reviews concerning the treatment abroad scheme have taken place since 2020, broken down by year. [41206/26]

641. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Health whether any audit, review, or oversight process relating to the treatment abroad scheme identified deficiencies in data collection, reporting, expenditure monitoring, or governance controls since 2020. [41207/26]