Health minister defends timeline on dealing with winter pressures

The health minister has defended his department’s timeline for initiating a plan to deal with winter pressures on the health service.

Mike Nesbitt said a plan has been developed but has not yet been finalised and will be published on Thursday.

It comes in response to comments made by Alliance MLA Nuala McAllister, over what she described as a “shocking” lack of information on how winter pressures will be managed.

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

McAllister said assembly members had been raising the issue of the department’s winter preparedness plan since January, but that nothing had yet been published.

She said information provided to the health committee to date had been “inadequate” and lacking in detail, despite the service already facing pressures.

BBC News NI has seen a leaked presentation paper entitled The Big Discussion from the Department of Health, which it is understood will be presented to Stormont’s health committee on Thursday.

The document outlines pressures on the health service and points to areas that need improvement.

The Department of Health said the document was not its winter preparedness plan, but rather one of a number of documents which were never intended to be action specific, and which “formed part of the extensive discussion and practical work which has been taking place across the health and social care system”.

It added that it had already mobilised an extensive vaccination programme, to minimise the impact from winter infections such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Covid-19.

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

She added it was “not acceptable” that a winter preparedness plan had not already been published, and that she understood the health sector was not happy either.

She also described the inadequate level of information given to the health committee as “shocking”.

However speaking on Wednesday, the minister said: “We are in mid-October, I am determined to get it out ahead of last years plan, which was published in November.”

Admitting that pressures on the health service were “bad” last year, the minister said the reason the plan has not yet been published is due to “operational delivery”.

“There is not a final signed-off plan, and the reason for that is all of the operational delivery will be performed by the five geographically defined health and social care trusts, they have to input their plans into our overall master plan,” he said.

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

He said the figure has fallen by almost a quarter, which is equivalent to 24,811 fewer patients.

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

He said that ahead of the winter preparedness plan being published, the drop in waiting lists “will hopefully help”.

However, McAllister said she would be “embarrassed” if she was the Department of Health attending Stormont’s health committee on Thursday.

“It’s too late now, moving forward, we have to make sure that it works, because we can’t see the same scenes every single year where our medical staff are put under immense pressure, but patient outcomes are poor, something has got to change.”