Recommendation IHRD-87: Independent Medical Examiner
From Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths, published 31 January 2018.
Recommendation
The Department should now institute the office of Independent Medical Examiner to scrutinise those hospital deaths not referred to the Coroner.
In brief (written by this site)
The Inquiry recommended establishing an independent medical examiner to review unreferred hospital deaths. In an update from October 2022, the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) stated that "A non-statutory prototype Independent Medical Examiner service is now operating across all five Health and Social Care Trusts" (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Oct 2022). While the department described action to run this prototype across the regional trusts, its statement did not mention the scrutiny of hospital deaths not referred to the coroner (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Oct 2022).
Sources
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 1 Oct 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
My Department accepts the recommendations of the O'Hara Report in their entirety.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
The Minister of Health accepted all 96 recommendations together, in one sentence of a written statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 25 March 2021. That sentence is not a response to any one recommendation alone, and the Department of Health published no response to each recommendation. The Department's statements of 31 January, 2 February and 30 March 2018 contain no acceptance of the recommendations.
Delivery
Department of Health (Northern Ireland) says in progress (28 October 2022)
A non-statutory prototype Independent Medical Examiner service is now operating across all five Health and Social Care Trusts.
Site note: These words are from the Department of Health's document linked on this page. The Department's website asks automated tools not to fetch its document files directly, so the site cites the page that links the document.
Source
Responsible bodies
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Department of Health NI
Response - Department of Health (Northern Ireland)
Delivery statement