Apologies for the inevitable cross posting
Dear Colleagues
The Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety ( An Roinn Sláinte, Seirbhsísí Sóisialta agus Sábháilteachta Poiblí) in Northern Ireland Bairbre de Brún, has extended the consultation period for Developing Better Services: Modernising Hospitals and Reforming Structures.
The deadline for receipt of responses is now 31st October.
The consultation paper sets out a model for future hospitals services and gives options for the changes in the administrative structures of the Health and Personal Social Services. It also makes an initial assessment of the equality implications of the changes and sets out the resources required and estimated timescale for implementation
The consultation paper is available on the DHSSPS website at:
http://www.dhsspsni.gov.uk/publications/2002/betterservices.html
I've attached foreward below.
Best wishes
David McDaid
LSE Health and Social Care
Foreward by Bairbre de Brún
I commissioned a review of acute hospital services in August 2000, and asked the review group to make recommendations on the future profile of hospital services, taking account of issues of accessibility, safety, clinical standards and quality of services. The review was set up against a background of many years of under-funding of health services, which has undermined and weakened their capacity to deliver the quality of service demanded of a modern hospital system. My objective was to develop an agenda for a major, and long overdue, modernisation of the acute hospital system. The Executive has recognised the need to boost health and social care expenditure and has invested an additional £523 million in healthcare since the establishment of the Assembly. Of this, 80% has been required merely to maintain existing services.
While this additional and much needed expenditure is welcome, extra spending alone is not the answer. To provide a modern hospital system that will meet the needs of all our people, well into the future, will require a fundamental change in the way services are delivered and administered. Otherwise we will see services continue to decline and fall behind standards elsewhere. In this paper I am setting out how I consider our hospital services need to be modernised and the decisions required to take these changes forward. My proposals are not about reducing acute services. Rather they aim to build upon the firm foundations of current services, to ensure that everyone will have prompt access to high quality acute care, delivered close to their homes wherever possible.
I would expect my proposals to bring about a new, modern and more effective hospital service, a service that is set up and resourced to meet the needs of the expected numbers of patients that it serves; deliver a world-class service with much improved outcomes, in areas such as cancer and heart disease; eliminate the problem of people waiting for admission and delayed discharges; meet peak demands without postponing normal activity; and substantially reduce waiting times, bringing them down to a maximum of three months for non-urgent cases, with priority cases treated much sooner.
Delivering quality care also demands organisational structures that are fit for purpose and equal to the challenges facing a modern health service. The need for organisational reform has been evident for some time, but the issues are complex. Before coming to decisions, I would like to consult as widely as possible on the options set out in this paper for structural change. I also want to take account of the emerging principles/criteria from the Executive's recently announced Review of Public Administration.
The acute hospitals review, now in its final stages, should not be seen in isolation. It is directly linked to work that I have commissioned covering: Investing in Health, which is the Executive's strategy for improving the health and well-being of the population; Building the Way Forward in Primary Care, a new approach to primary care; Best Practice, Best Care, which sets out proposals for improving the quality of services; and Review of Community Care - First Report, which is the first stage of a review of community care. Taken together, these initiatives form the main components of a unified and coherent approach to improving health and social services. I intend to bring them together in a new Regional Strategy, which will be published next year.
The Executive's 2002-2005 Programme for Government commits it to developing proposals for a modern acute hospital service, with the declared expectation of taking decisions on the way forward in the course of 2002. This is a challenging agenda for change, which will not be delivered overnight. However, we now have a robust strategy that will deliver a modern, caring, quality hospital and health care system. A system capable of delivering high-quality care and treatment
today, and well into the 21st century.
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