To ask the Minister of Health to detail any deaths determined to be due to neglect, in the last ten years, broken down by Health and Social Care Trust.

DATIX (CCS2) incident coding does not include “neglect” as a standalone category within the incident module. As such, we are unable to provide data specifically coded under “neglect.”

Death-related SAIs are recorded under a range of defined incident types (e.g. falls, medication errors, missed diagnosis/failure to diagnose, delayed diagnosis, safeguarding concerns, choking, aggressive behaviour, etc.). These codes are designed to capture the specific nature of the incident that occurred. While aspects of care within these incidents may, in some cases, raise questions relating to neglect, it is important to note that “neglect” is not a discrete or consistently defined classification within the coding framework. It is a broad term encompassing a wide spectrum of issues, and not all incidents of a similar type would necessarily indicate that neglect has occurred.

Given this, identifying cases of “neglect” would require detailed case-by-case review of individual death-related reports rather than extraction from coded data. Undertaking such an exercise across a ten-year period would require a significant manual review and considerable time. As Trusts utilise the same DATIX CCS2 coding structure, they would also be unable to provide a reliable response based solely on system codes.