Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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463. To ask the Minister for Health his plans to bring forward new legislation with regard to hospital groups; if there is a statutory basis for their establishment or any requirement for such; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4792/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The establishment of hospital groups was committed to in ‘Future Health: A Strategic Framework for Reform of the Health Service 2012-2015’ which was approved by Government in November 2012 and is a key building block in delivering on the Programme for Government commitment to fundamentally reform our health services.

The Reports ‘The Establishment of Hospital Groups as a transition to Independent Hospital Trusts’ (DoH, 2013) and ‘Securing the Future of Smaller Hospitals: A Framework for Development’ (HSE, 2013), provide the foundations for the reorganisation of hospital services into Hospital Groups, each with its own governance and management, that will deliver high quality, safe patient care in a cost effective manner. Within Hospital Groups, all hospitals, irrespective of size, will work together in an integrated way.

While Future Health sets the broad direction of travel for reforming the system, it was always made clear that an incremental approach to implementation would be taken. Future Health specifically referred to a “reform-learn-reform” approach being taken to the process which would enable us to make changes to the proposed approach while simultaneously making progress towards the final structures and delivering tangible improvements as we go.

Seven hospital groups have been established on a non-statutory administrative basis. My priority for 2015 is to get all the Hospital Groups up and running as single cohesive entities before then moving towards developing the appropriate underlying legislation as part of the wider structural reforms.