The health minister, Simon Hamilton, is not getting to grips with underlying problems in Northern Ireland’s NHS, according to Conservative spokesman, Frank Shivers. Mr Shivers, a Bangor businessman who is the party’s prospective Assembly candidate for North Down, said that there was still “far too little emphasis” on moving care into the community.
“Mr Hamilton is just fire-fighting by finding extra money here and there to inject into the system, mainly acute hospitals”, Frank explained. “Most recently he announced £30 million would be used to tackle long waiting lists. However, he’s not getting to grips with problems around commissioning the correct services and the failures in community-based care which underlie persistently long waiting lists and annual crises in hospitals. I’d ask how much of this £30 million is being using to implement the long-awaited Transforming Your Care policy? The Donaldson Report highlighted that the Executive need to put TYC into action rather than simply talking about it.”
“We’re still waiting for ‘political consensus’ to get things moving on Donaldson. Meanwhile, local care, like Bangor Community Hospital in my constituency, is being targeted, forcing more of a burden unto acute hospitals. If anything, the minister’s interventions are actually working against TYC. Voters in Northern Ireland deserve more strategic vision from their political leaders, and patients deserve a minister who has a clear grasp of the bigger picture in the NHS. Mr Hamilton is now the third DUP minister in the department of health and yet we seem no closer to seeing much needed reforms which were first mooted in 2011.”