Mr. Paul Reid:

Regarding the audit of available space and better use of space, all the hospitals are looking relentlessly at every available space they have and any capital funding that can free up emergency flows and so forth. They bring forward some very good proposals and have been funded. In most of the emergency departments I have visited we are seeing good, innovative ways to improve patient flows in acute settings. One of the challenges is to scale up those initiatives and have a level of consistency across all emergency departments.

To reassure the Deputy I will give a few examples of what is happening across the acute settings. There is a very good innovative process with streaming. Patients who come from GP referrals with adequate information can be referred through the ED and onwards. That is happening very well in a number of areas.

Somebody mentioned ANPs, advanced nursing practitioners earlier. The use of ANPs in our emergency departments, EDs, and indeed clinicians and advanced medical assessment units are very successfully moving on patients with specific needs much more quickly. Triage processes, which can differ in many EDs, have been very successful. Emergency clinicians in EDs prove very beneficial and help patient flows so that we do not have the congestion that has been seen. Much of our patient advocacy services specifically in terms of some mental health issues that the Deputy just spoke about on our EDs are working very well for us.

A number of initiatives are taking place. Our challenge is definitely to use space, on which I am sure we have a very accurate picture across the way, but more importantly to scale up some of those good initiatives which are happening around the place. What I am seeing is very innovative and something we can scale up and roll out as part of the solution.