Ulster Unionist health spokesperson, Roy Beggs MLA, has welcomed the announcement of an additional £3m to help tackle winter pressures.
Roy Beggs said:
“Increased winter pressures on our emergency departments are not unusual – it’s traditionally the busiest time of year for our hospitals. In addition to seasonal health pressures, we also have a rising prevalence of long-term conditions and an ageing population requiring increased medical intervention and access to hospital beds.
“Whilst the recruitment of extra staff for domiciliary care and increasing the number of packages available are very positive steps which should both help enable patients to leave hospital faster, the reality is they would have had a far greater impact if they had instead been planned months ago and before the busy period started
“Thankfully, the Health Department is right to say that the latest data shows that hospital emergency departments in recent weeks are performing better than in the same period a year ago. But the circumstances are very different – we have had a very unusually mild winter and last year’s strain of the winter flu was much more virulent.
“Yet thousands of people, even under these better conditions, are still having to wait for far longer than they should. So whilst I pay credit to all of our health and social care staff working under significant pressure, I would urge officials such as Richard Pengelly to not get caught up in comparing and promoting sets of data which are not at all the same.”
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