The UK Government has pledged to support the Stormont Executive in reforming and transforming public services.
Northern Ireland Office Minister Fleur Anderson made the announcement after attending the Accelerating Change conference hosted by the Department of Health in Belfast on Wednesday.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State paid tribute to health minister Mike Nesbitt for “bringing together expert voices on health reform into one room.”
“The conference highlighted the need to accelerate change in the health service and this is something the UK Government is keen to support,” she said.
“I understand the scale of the challenge facing the health service across the UK and particularly in Northern Ireland.
“This Government’s five missions provide ambitious, measurable and long-term objectives to tackle shared public service challenges, which exist right across the UK.
“We want to support the NI Executive and the Department of Health to transform the health service to provide better outcomes for local people.”
It comes after an international expert told delegates at the La Mon Hotel that Northern Ireland has all the tools to reform its health and social care service.
First Minister Michelle O’Neill, deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, Health Minister Mike Nesbitt and Agriculture and Environment Minister Andrew Muir were among those in attendance along with health service workers.
Professor Raphael Bengoa warned that staying with the current model will see the service swallowing up all the public money in 15 years.
He returned to Northern Ireland this week, eight years after his major blueprint for reforming health services in the region.
Recommendations from the 2016 report, Systems, Not Structures: Changing Health And Social Care by a panel headed by Prof Bengoa, were never fully implemented amid the collapse of two assemblies and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Prof Bengoa said the principles in the report are still valid.
Prof Bengoa said there needs to be a management system for change, plans and clarity.
He said that technology, including AI, will help in some aspects but said there may need to be a tough decision around hospital expenditure.
“Nobody really knows how to do that so people are exploring how to do that sort of decision, but if we stay with the previous model we are going to be using all the public money in 15 years,” he said.
“It’s better to start taking, slowly and incrementally, decisions in relation to where the finances go.”
Prof Bengoa said a strong centre is needed, but “not micro-managing”.
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Ms O’Neill pledged her support for reform, adding it will be a collective effort by the Executive.
“I don’t think anyone can dispute the fact we need to fix our health service. I think we have the blueprint in the professor’s work eight years ago and now I hope we can get on in earnest as a new four party Executive and make it happen,” she said.
“This is a collective effort. We need to work on this together. This is not going to fall, I believe, on the shoulder of one minister.
“I am the First Minister of the Executive and I’ll work with every other Executive colleague. I want us to fix our health service, I want us to invest in our workers, they’re the backbone that keeps the health service running.”
Meanwhile Ms Little-Pengelly said the Executive “has been very clear thus far, we want to see that necessary transformation of the health service”.
“We know that people are waiting much too long in terms of the waiting lists, we know that people aren’t getting the care when they need it and where they need it, so of course that requires investment, it requires transformation and that will require the health minister getting the support he needs in terms of driving that forward,” she said.
Speaking after the conference, DUP health spokesperson Diane Dodds said Prof Bengoa’s visit “must be the catalyst for the change he outlined eight years ago”.
“The pressure for health reform has only grown since 2016 and ultimately it is essentially the same issues that exist today, only exacerbated by the delay we have faced and the further squeeze on budgets,” she added.
“Professor Bengoa’s message today was of the need to accelerate the pace of change. That is an important and a welcome message which must be heeded, not just by the Minister but by everyone who will be faced with the decisions and challenges that taking forward a process of reforming our health service will bring.”