Health minister defends timeline on dealing with winter pressures

The health minister has defended his department's timetable for initiating a plan to deal with winter pressure on the health system.

Mike Nesbitt said the plan has been developed but is not yet finalized and will be released Thursday.

This happens in response to comments made by Alliance MLA Nuala McAlisterdue to what she called a “shocking” lack of information about how winter pressure would be managed.

Meanwhile, speaking at a conference on Wednesday morning, Nesbitt hailed the “very remarkable success” in recent reductions in outpatient waiting lists.

McAllister said assembly members have been raising the issue of the department's winterization plan since January, but nothing has been released yet.

She said the information provided to the health board to date was “inadequate” and not detailed enough, despite the service already facing pressure.

BBC News NI has seen a leaked presentation document entitled 'The Great Department of Health Debate' which is expected to be presented to Stormont's health committee on Thursday.

The document describes the pressures on the health system and identifies areas for improvement.

The Department of Health said the document was not a winterization plan, but rather one of a number of documents that were never intended to be actionable and that “are part of the wider discussion and practical work that is taking place across the health and social care system”.

He added that he had already mobilized an extensive vaccination program to minimize the impact of winter infections such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Covid-19.

McAllister said the minister and the department “have not provided any information about exactly what they are doing to better prepare hospitals and staff for the pressures they are already facing.”

She added that it was “unacceptable” that the winterization plan had not yet been published and that she understood the health sector was also unhappy.

She also called the inadequate level of information provided to the health board “shocking.”

However, speaking on Wednesday, the minister said: “We are in mid-October and I am determined to complete the work ahead of last year's plan, which was published in November.”

Admitting that pressure on the health service had been “intense” over the past year, the minister said the reason the plan had not yet been published was due to “swift implementation”.

“There is no final approved plan and the reason for this is that all operational delivery will be carried out by the five geographically defined health and social care trusts, they must feed their plans into our overall master plan,” he said.

Speaking at the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Confederation (NICON) conference on Wednesday morning, Nesbitt cited new figures which showed a fall in the number of people waiting more than four years for an outpatient appointment in Northern Ireland.

According to him, this figure has decreased by almost a quarter, which is equivalent to a decrease in the number of patients by 24,811 people.

Over the same period, he said, the number of people waiting more than four years for treatment fell by 33%, or by 6,683 patients.

He said before the winterization plan was published, the reduction in queues would “hopefully help”.

However, McAllister said she would have been “embarrassed” if she had been the Department of Health representative present at Stormont's health committee on Thursday.

“It's too late now and we need to make sure it works because we can't see the same scenes every year where our medical staff are under enormous pressure but patient outcomes are poor, something has to change.”