Hospitals – Creating a Network for Better Outcomes

Overview

Our health system is on a journey and change is coming. Changes will be based on advances in health and social care and taking account of what the public and health professionals are telling us. The ambition, always, is delivery better outcomes: for patients, service users and our wonderful and diverse healthcare workforce.  Although health and social care practices have evolved over the decades, the regional infrastructure supporting these services has not kept pace. Balanced by what we can afford, we are committed to deliver for Northern Ireland’s citizens the right treatment in the right place, at the right time. Delivering locally where possible in peoples’ own home, through General Practitioner (GP) services, community pharmacy and centrally (accessible in only one place anywhere in Northern Ireland or limited sites) only where necessary, we aim to deliver safe, sustainable, high-quality health and social care services.

The purpose of this consultation document is to support widespread engagement with communities, clinicians, and society as a whole on Why we need to reconfigure our Hospitals; How we will manage our hospital system as an integrated network; What pathways there are for citizens to access hospital services and how they can travel there; Where those services are and will be delivered; and When future service reviews will take place to inform future reconfiguration. This will become the basis and strategic context for current and future service reconfigurations.

This consultation document is one important piece of the puzzle. We recognise that we need improvements across population health, social care, primary and community care and mental health, alongside a well-functioning hospital network. In order to reform our health and social care system, improve population health and put our entire system on a sustainable footing; it will take sustained effort, funding and a collaborative cross-Executive approach.. There is no single ‘silver bullet’.

With this in mind, your thoughts and feedback on the proposals within this framework are very important in helping to create a hospital network to achieve better outcomes for all.

Why your views matter

The Department is seeking views on the proposals within this framework document with a view to creating a hospital network to achieve better outcomes for all.