Health Plan puts Focus on Neighbourhood Care
Date published:
Health and social care services in Northern Ireland are facing a watershed year, with significant opportunities and challenges to address.
That's the message from Health Minister Mike Nesbitt as he today published a Health and Social Care reset plan.
The document commits to establishing a neighbourhood centred system of health and social care, bringing more services closer to communities.
It also sets out measures to counter unprecedented financial pressures, with a projected Pound 600m gap between available funding and the cost of maintaining existing services this year.
The reset plan builds on the key themes in the three-year strategic plan published by the Minister in December 2024: Stabilisation, Reform and Delivery.
The Minister said: "This a defining and watershed year for our health service. We have to deliver on reform and waiting list investment, while at the same time securing efficiencies and savings on a scale not seen before. There are both challenges and opportunities of huge significance.
"At the heart of the reform agenda must be concrete progress on neighbourhood care, bringing more services as close as possible to people's front doors.
"This has been a long-term objective but meaningful delivery is required, including a new model of primary care and early intervention.
"This neighbourhood approach will help tackle health inequalities, and support individuals to look after their own health and well-being, while recognising that health interventions are only one element to improving well-being. Of equal importance are employment, housing, education and other important services delivered across Government.
"The reset plan represents the next steps in the outworking of my three-year strategic plan for health and social care, recognising that progress has been constrained by financial pressures."
The reset plan sets out the "most ambitious efficiency programme" in the history of Northern Ireland's Health and Social Care system. It is designed to achieve Pound 300m in savings in 2025/26, in addition to the Pound 200m delivered in 2024/25.
The programme will involve a suite of actions focused on improving Trust financial controls, reducing locum and agency costs, increasing workforce availability through absence reduction, removing unwarranted variation in clinical care and procurement, optimising medicines spend, reducing central budgets and administrative costs and maximising the income the HSC can attract through research and innovation.
The Minister continued: "The reset plan includes new structures to enable our Trusts to take shared decisions on a 'whole system' basis.
"In addition, a new approach to Systems Financial Management is being introduced, with a focus on reducing the budget deficit and driving efficiencies in every area of the system, at every level.
"This is being progressed through a Systems Management Oversight Group led by my Permanent Secretary Mike Farrar, to develop and drive forward a work programme that will deliver budget savings today and build financial sustainability for the future.
"Alongside this efficiency focus, support from the Executive will still be required to deliver on the reform agenda and manage the remaining funding pressures for the year."
Plans for waiting list investment, reflecting a key Programme for Government priority, were detailed in an Implementation and Funding Plan published in May. www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/elective-care-framework-restart-recovery-and-redesign
