Dr. Áine Carroll:

I thank members for their questions on stroke care and the rehabilitation services. In addition to my current role, my day job is a specialist in neurological rehabilitation. I am a brain injury rehabilitation consultant and most of my patients, unfortunately, are young adults with stroke. It is not an exaggeration to say that stroke care in this country has literally been transformed in recent years with the work of my multidisciplinary colleagues in the stroke programme, but also the work of the Irish Heart Foundation stroke council. Stroke provision has dramatically changed and thrombolysis rates have gone from being among the worst in Europe to one of the best. The rate has changed from approximately 2% to in excess of 9% in two years, which is an extraordinary achievement. I applaud the work of my colleagues in doing that. The stroke programme has been doing much work on getting access in a safe manner to thrombolysis but also to specialist rehabilitation and specialist acute care for stroke patients. The programme is on target. Our hope is that the stroke unit in Cork will be open by the end of June. Access to 24-7 thrombolysis is improving and with the development of telemedicine that will be increased again. We are very happy and the citizens of this country have now got access to high quality stroke care.

With regard to neurological rehabilitation, I can comment on the clinical programme as I was the clinical lead of the rehabilitation medicine programme before I took up my current role. It is correct to say that the clinical programme is examining the strategic delivery of neurological rehabilitation but it is very likely that with the developments in the programme that it will meet a lot of the recommendations that came out of the strategy. The deliverables for 2013 from the rehabilitation medicine programme include the model of care, which is entering its final stages. My colleague, Dr. Jacinta Morgan, has recently been appointed clinical lead of the rehabilitation medicine programme and she will lead it for the next couple of years. We are looking to develop four regional inpatient rehabilitation units and outpatient rehabilitation units. Five additional consultant appointments are currently going through the recruitment process. That is a 70% increase in the number of consultants in rehabilitation medicine.

In terms of community rehabilitation, through the clinical programmes there will be a cross-progamme initiative to look at the management of long-term conditions. Part of the work will be to look at the provision of rehabilitation services not just for neurological conditions, but for all long-term conditions. We hope to see a group being brought together in the next few months. A key part of the work of the clinical programmes is looking at the issues of unscheduled care but also long-term conditions.