Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 23 October 2019
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
Sláintecare Implementation Strategy: Discussion
Mr. Dean Sullivan:
I will comment more generally about diagnostics and take up the point the Senator was making about the slightly convoluted process around dietetics. The most important thing, to refer back to Deputy Donnelly's point, is that people have timely access to diagnostics. That is more important than whether it is through a GP or whether the diagnostics are delivered close to the patient's home. The first thing we must do is ensure that the capacity in the system in Ireland is sufficient to respond in a timely way to the needs of the population. We must get that in some type of order, and that is some way ahead at present. However, through the same process we were talking about previously we will start to see progress on it during 2020 and beyond. Then we can move to make it ever more accessible for GPs and so forth and, in due course, get to a position where, if it is entirely reasonable for somebody to be referred by the person's GP for a scan of some description, it does not go around the houses and we end up with that service being delivered in a local setting.
On the dietetics issue, we could pick a number of pathways. Some of the eye care pathways are a little like that as well, with people going around the houses to an extent. A number of pathway processes are being reviewed by the clinical programmes with a view to streamlining them and identifying whether there is any added value in the patient going through two or three hoops when care could be delivered more straightforwardly and locally without the various hoops on the way. There are issues to be resolved and assurances given to various clinical staff to understand what that would look like. They are motivated by, among other things, ensuring that patients do not fall between the cracks. That is how these pathways in some cases have developed. However, in the 21st century there is certainly scope, and dietetics is one area, to make the pathway much more straightforward for the patient so he or she does not have to go via a hospital to get physiotherapy, dietetics, diagnostics or whatever else. It should be entirely possible for patients to access those at local level without going anywhere near a hospital or a hospital practitioner.
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