Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can. These four streams are all areas where Sláintecare is pivoted. Basically, we are asking, rather than telling from the top down, what people should be doing in the local health organisation. We are asking hospitals, community health organisations and voluntary organisations to tell us what they believe they can do. People tell me as we go around the country all the time: "I have a really good project down here and I could take some people off the waiting list" or "I could work better with the local hospital if I was able to get this technology". We have set out the streams - right care, right place, right time and what more one can do. These are the objectives of the scheme. There is the scaling of current successful integration projects, patient-centred improvement projects, cross-agency collaboration and changing the model of care.

You are right that there are four funding streams linked to each of those actions. The first is scaling and sharing existing examples of best practice and process for chronic disease management and care for older people. For example, an organisation or part of the health service might be doing something very good in its community looking after older people with diabetes and it might believe that with extra investment it could scale it up or it could be replicated in a different part of the country.

Funding stream two is supporting scaling and sharing of existing examples of best practice approaches to reduce waiting time for consultation and treatment. For example, and I am not pre-empting these but just giving illustrative examples, we all talk about the Sligo eye model, which did a really good job of taking a number of eye procedures and eye outpatient appointments out of the hospital and into the community. Could that be scaled up? We know it worked in that part of the country so why does it not work in another part of the country?

The third one is supporting digital innovation including patient access to health information. Again, does one have a way of using technology to improve the delivery of health services? The new addendum to the GP contract, for example, suggests that virtual clinics could be held. We have one in the country at present in cardiology and it commits to another four. It is where consultants and GPs interact about individual patients. Is there a digital solution to help implement Sláintecare?

The last is supporting new approaches in the community, industry and voluntary sectors. We should not believe that the public health service has all the answers because many of our health services are being delivered by voluntary operators. People are being invited to pitch their ideas. They have until 18 April to send in the ideas and I expect we will allocate the funding in May.