Three-year health plan includes ‘good deal’ on staff salaries

Securing a “good deal” on staff pay for 2024/25 is one of the highlights of the Health Minister’s new three-year strategic plan for health and social care in Northern Ireland.

Mike Nesbitt also told the Assembly that a consultation will produce proposals to the Department of Health to make the serious adverse events process fit for purpose.

The plan includes a number of initiatives aimed at stabilizing, improving and delivering services, but lacks details on how these will be paid for.

The minister said the pace of progress would be greatly influenced by future budget settlements and “successful partnerships” with the executive.

The plan will also consider advance proposals for tackling obesity and the organizational duty of candor, as well as proposals for the individual duty of candor.

Nesbitt said he believed the plan would make an important contribution as it points to their direction of travel to secure better outcomes for staff, patients and service users.

“I am well aware of the enormous pressures on staff and the serious shortfalls in provision across the system.

“Given budget and other resource and workforce constraints, stabilization was the only viable option for this year.

“However, this plan is not about what we cannot achieve – it is about improving the health and well-being of our population and making our health and social care services the best they can be. It is about hope and ambition Is.” The minister added.

Analysis from Mary-Louise Connolly, BBC News NI health correspondent

It reads like the health minister’s Christmas wish list.

It is an ambitious plan without targets or costs.

From a positive perspective, it is good to see, cutting down on pay, social care and health inequalities.

But how will all this be financed? Isn’t that the key?

Mike Nesbitt highlights that how quickly he can deliver all this will be significantly affected by the budget settlement.

Although this is the case for every executive department, after weeks of revelations about the waste of money in health buildings, the Department of Health has a tough case to argue.

The Christmas season has provided the backdrop for many ministers to release their wish lists – while it is a time of magic, it must also contain a dose of harsh reality.

The three-year plan sets out a series of initiatives to reform the health care system, including:

• Bringing forward a new obesity strategy framework

• Enforcing provisions in NI on the UK Tobacco and Vapes Bill

• Proposal for minimum unit pricing for liquor

• Initiative on Health Disparities

• New Lung and Expanded Bowel Screening Program

• Health and social care trusts to provide 46,000 extra outpatient assessments and 11,000 extra treatments by 2027

• Publish plans to roll out multi-disciplinary team model for GPs across NI by April 2025

• Implement new home care services, learning disability services and children’s social care services, including continuing care home placements

• Pay for the independent adult social care sector should be the same as the real living wage sector

• Improve neurology and stroke services with proposals subject to public consultation

• Improve pathology services and establish a single management structure for pathology and blood transfusion services

• Review breast cancer and radiotherapy services and how to best deliver them in the future

• Initiatives on the quality and safety of health services, including consultation on Department proposals to make the serious adverse events process fit for purpose