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Minister for Health travels to Glasgow to visit an elective-only hospital tasked with reducing waiting lists
Minister for Health Simon Harris TD will today (Friday) travel to Glasgow to visit an elective-only hospital tasked with reducing waiting lists.
The Minister’s visit, which will be hosted by the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport Jeane Freeman, to the Golden Jubilee National Hospital provides an opportunity to visit a state of the art facility and to learn more about the Scottish experience of providing improved care to the population through elective-only hospitals.
Under the National Development Plan 2018-2027 , the Government has committed to building three new dedicated elective hospitals in Cork, Dublin and Galway. The three new facilities will provide high volume, low complexity procedures on a day and outpatient basis, together with a range of ambulatory diagnostic services.
The aim is to both increase capacity in the hospital system and provide a better separation of scheduled and unscheduled care, in line with the recommendations of the Sláintecare Report.
Minister Harris highlighted
the shared commitment to integrated care and to a focus on population health and well-being in both Ireland and Scotland” and expressed confidence that the collaboration would be fruitful.
Health systems across Europe face many similar challenges, such as ageing, chronic disease, anti-microbial resistance, delivering homecare and community care. We in Ireland are keen to learn from other health systems as we reform our services, and to share our own lessons learned.
Alongside the Minister’s visit, Irish and Scottish officials have met in Edinburgh to formally convene the Irish-Scottish Health Forum. The purpose of this new forum is to support shared learning at a senior level within the health systems in Ireland and Scotland. This inaugural meeting of the Health Forum launches the year-long learning exchange and will identify areas of mutual interest. It will focus initially on five areas; Public Health & Health Improvement; Patient Safety; Data, Digital, Technology and Innovation; Scheduled and Unscheduled Care; Service and System Integration.