2nd Floor, Parkway 5,
Parkway Business Centre
Princess Road
Manchester
M14 7LU
Tel: 0161 765 4178
29th August 2012
Dear Miss Jackson
Freedom of Information Request Reference M217-12
Thank you for your request of the 27th July 2012. Please find to follow the response
to your enquiry.
For clarification you asked the following questions:
I understand the Department of Health require these events to be reported
through a system called Strategic Executive Information System (STEIS)
Please confirm whether you use this or another electronic system(s) to record
SUI's? Please name this system(s) if not STEIS.
The system we use is StEIS
Please confirm whether you record on your system(s) incidents occurring
within contracted services, commissioned services (including hospital, GP,
dentist, pharmacist, private etc) and whether you require SUI's to be reported
to you?
SUI’s are automatically received by (reported to) us for all the provider services
which we commission. We also duly update/record information in response to them
as needed.
We also record /log other incidents accordingly as appropriate - be these from within
contracted, commissioned or affiliated services.
If you do require contracted / commissioned service SUI's to be reported to
you, please clarify and define the SUI's you require to be informed of.
These are as defined in the NHS Northwest SUI Reporting Protocol, please see
attached document.
Please provide, in as much detail as you are able (indicating when information
has been withheld), all the information you hold on your named electronic SUI
system(s) relating to all incidents reported by or to you within the years 2010,
2011 and 2012 to date.
Regrettably, in this instance, I am unable to provide the information you have
requested in this question on the basis that I estimate that to find, collate and provide
all of the information you have requested would exceed the appropriate limit set out
in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004. The Regulations state that for any FOI request, the appropriate
cost limit is £450, calculated at a rate of £25 an hour to find, extract, collate and
provide information that has been requested. This equates to a maximum of 18 hours
work.
In order to locate all the information you have requested it would be necessary to
have individual sight of each reported incident logged into the StEIS database, many
of which are now in the archive system. This means that they would have to be
retrieved and individually looked at to ensure that any identifying personal details of
each incident be blanked out in order to comply with Data Protection legislation.
Over the period of time specified we have dealt with, in the region of, approximately
700 or more incidents. To locate, scrutinise, blank out identifying details, and collate
the information required in relation to each and every one of these would take an
inordinate amount of time, well exceeding the 18 hour statutory limit.
I trust that our inability to provide an answer to your final question will not cause you
much inconvenience.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for
an internal review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months
and should be addressed to: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx .
If you are unhappy with the outcome of an internal review you have the right to ask
the Information Commissioner to consider the handling of your request. They can be
contacted through the following hyperlink https://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/contact_us.aspx
We are keen to improve our performance wherever possible so if you could complete
and return the attached Satisfaction Survey we would be very grateful.
Yours sincerely
Cathy Wilson
Information Governance Support
Att.
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