Towards a new National Community Health Service

solutions to overcrowding in emergency
departments. A move towards unique health
identifiers will allow us to make the concept of
integrated care a reality.
We have started to implement financial reforms,
including a more efficient activity-based funding
model, or ‘money follows the patient’. This will
reduce the cost of health care in the long term
and improve public health.
As well as representing major milestones on
the road to universal health care, these are
important initiatives with the potential to drive
performance improvement and deliver significant
benefits with more timely access to high quality
health care for all the people of Ireland.
We will continue to drive this series of reforms to
improve the way our hospital systems function.
Reducing overcrowding in A&Es
In Government, we established the Emergency
Department Taskforce to drive long term
solutions to overcrowding in A&Es and to
address the issue of delayed discharges which
contributes to that overcrowding.
We will increase the number of locations
of care for less serious injury. We will
reform work practices and the allocation
of staff within hospitals by implementing
the recommendations of the Emergency
Department taskforce on the need for
systemic change in dealing with discharges,
ranging from a broadening of the role of
advanced nurse practitioners to cross-team
discharging and changes to the organisation of
the working day within hospitals.
Treatment of chronic disease currently account
for two thirds of emergency admissions
through A&E and 60% of total bed days.
Labour’s plans to provide treatment for the
most prevalent chronic diseases within the
community will go a way towards alleviating
this. That’s just one example of how a strong
system of primary care will reduce pressure
on hospitals and provide for a stronger overall
service.
Significant additional investment have been
provided to the National Ambulance Service
in 2015 and 2016 to provide additional
resources to increase paramedic intake, expand
community first responder schemes and
develop clinical audit, as well as increasing
capacity in intermediate care, critical retrieval
and children’s ambulance services. We will
further increase this investment to add to the
ambulance fleet and recruit an additional 290
paramedics.
Towards a new National Community Health Service 7
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