HIQA Inspection Readiness Checklist for Irish Care Homes

A HIQA inspection can happen with little or no notice, which means "inspection-ready" has to be a service's normal operating state, not something assembled the week before a visit. This checklist is organised around the eight themes that HIQA's National Standards for Residential Care Settings for Older People are built on, so you can work through it theme by theme and see exactly where the gaps are before an inspector does. It's a working tool, not a guarantee of a particular inspection outcome — but it covers the ground that consistently comes up in practice.

Before you start: the basics that get checked first

• Certificate of registration is current, correct, and on display.
• Statement of Purpose is up to date and reflects the service actually being delivered — bed numbers, the range of care provided, staffing arrangements.
• Directory of Residents and Directory of Staff are current and complete.
• Previous HIQA inspection report and compliance plan (if any) are on file, with actions closed out and evidenced, not just marked "in progress."

1. Person-centred care and support

• Care plans are individualised, current, and reflect each resident's actual preferences and needs — not a templated document with the name changed.
• Evidence that residents (and where relevant, their families) were involved in developing and reviewing their care plan.
• Residents' rights, dignity, and choice are visibly reflected in daily routines, not just in policy.

2. Effective services

• Care and treatment are based on current evidence and best-practice guidance, with a clear line back to assessed need.
• Multidisciplinary input (GP, allied health professionals) is documented, current, and acted on.
• Outcomes are reviewed, not just recorded — evidence that care plans change when a resident's needs change.

3. Safe services

• Risk management policies (falls, choking, absconsion, and others relevant to the service) are current, specific to the setting, and known to staff — not generic downloads.
• Safeguarding of vulnerable adults procedures are current, staff know how to raise a concern, and any past concerns are documented with a clear outcome.
• Incident and near-miss reporting is happening in practice, being reviewed, and generating actual changes in procedure.
• Infection prevention and control practices are current and staff can demonstrate them, not just describe them.
• Medication management records are accurate, complete, and reconcile with stock.
• Fire safety records, drills, and equipment checks are current and logged.

4. Health and wellbeing

• Nutrition and hydration needs are assessed, documented, and monitored, with clear escalation where a resident is at risk.
• Activities and social engagement are genuinely resident-led and varied, not a single weekly slot ticked off a schedule.
• End-of-life care preferences are discussed, documented, and respected where known.

5. Leadership, governance and management

• Governance structure is clear — who is accountable for what is documented and understood by the team, not just the person in charge.
• Management oversight includes a genuine internal audit cycle, not only reactive fixes after an incident.
• Complaints procedure is accessible to residents and families, complaints are logged, and outcomes are documented and acted on.
• Previous compliance plan actions are fully closed out with evidence, not left open indefinitely.

6. Use of resources

• Staffing levels and skill mix are appropriate to the number and dependency of residents, and can be evidenced against the roster, not just claimed.
• Resources (equipment, supplies, facilities) are adequate for the care being delivered and maintained in usable condition.
• Residents' personal property, possessions and finances are managed in line with the provider's own policy — records of any money or valuables held for safekeeping are complete and reconcile, in line with the requirements under Schedule 5 and Schedule 3 of the Health Act 2007 (Care and Welfare of Residents in Designated Centres for Older People) Regulations 2013.

7. Responsive workforce

• Staff numbers, qualifications, and Garda vetting are all current and match what's recorded in the Directory of Staff.
• Mandatory training (manual handling, safeguarding, fire safety, infection control, and role-specific modules) is complete and evidenced for every staff member, not just new starters.
• Staff can describe, in their own words, what they'd do in the safeguarding, escalation, or emergency scenarios relevant to their role — not just that a policy exists.
• Supervision and performance review records are current.

8. Use of information

• Resident records (care plans, clinical notes, incident logs) are accurate, contemporaneous, and stored securely.
• Data protection practices meet current requirements for how resident and staff personal data is handled and stored.
• Information is actually used to inform decisions — for example, incident trends feeding back into risk management, not just archived after the fact.

How to use this checklist day to day

Treat it as a rolling audit rather than a once-a-year exercise. A simple approach that works for most services: pick one or two themes a month, walk through the relevant items with the team responsible, and log what's found — including what's working, not only the gaps. By the time a HIQA inspection happens, every theme has been reviewed recently rather than being reconstructed from memory under time pressure. This also naturally feeds the kind of ongoing staff training and inspection preparation HIQA expects to see evidence of, and it's the kind of ground covered by broader healthcare compliance and CPD training programmes for Irish providers.

Frequently asked questions

Does passing this checklist guarantee a good HIQA inspection outcome?

No — this is a working tool to catch common gaps, not an official HIQA document, and inspection outcomes depend on the judgement of the inspector on the day and matters specific to your service. It's designed to make sure the ground HIQA typically covers has already been reviewed internally.

How often should each theme be reviewed?

Most services find a monthly or quarterly rolling review, covering one or two themes at a time, works better than an annual all-at-once audit — it spreads the workload and means no single theme goes unreviewed for a year.

Who should own this checklist in a small provider without a dedicated compliance officer?

Typically the person in charge, sometimes alongside a finance or operations manager, particularly for the "use of resources" theme covering residents' property and finances. What matters most is that one person is clearly accountable for working through it, rather than it being informally shared across the team.

What's the most common gap providers find when they use a checklist like this?

In practice, training records and the "use of resources" items around residents' personal property and finances are the two areas most likely to have quietly drifted out of date, because they're reviewed less often than clinical or safeguarding records.

Inspection readiness isn't a single event to prepare for — it's the accumulated result of how consistently a service runs its own checks between inspections. Working through this list on a regular cycle is a practical way to keep that consistency without it becoming a full-time project every time a visit is announced.

Related readiness checklists: the CQC financial viability & market oversight checklist for the UK and the ACFR quarterly financial report filing checklist for Australia.