The Workers Party has submitted a detailed response to the hospitals - Creating a network for better outcomes.
Workers Party Representative for Downpatrick Colm Mullan has commented today after the Party submitted their response to the Consultation Document he said the Workers Party is not opposed to change within the Health Service.
In fact, we have made many demands for change over the past decade. We have always believed that the service should use all new technological advances at their disposal for the benefit of patients and service users. The Workers Party has made it clear in our submission that we are opposed to the type and level of changes contained within these proposals.
The Workers Party acknowledges that health and social care practices have evolved over the years, but we would question whether those practices and changes have always been in the best interests of the patients and service users. The privatisation and fragmentation of services has caused enormous damage especially to home care and residential care, and continues to have a major effect on our hospitals, those actions set the scene for our current health service crisis.
At the moment we are experiencing a two tier system within our health service, those with the ability to pay can jump the queue and get certain health treatments quickly. The workers Party is now deeply concerned that the proposals in this document is going to create three different tiers of hospitals and how they will impact on delivering sustainable services. The document goes into quite substantial detail on critical mass and its effectiveness for delivering services and the training and learning opportunities for medical professionals and other staff. This argument is not new, in fact it has been mentioned in all restructuring proposals for decades.
The document also mentions that there are some hospitals that medical staff do not want to work in. We are aware that this is currently the case and has been for many years. How can this unwillingness on the part of professionals to work in certain locations be balanced against the proposed changes that would require patients to travel to receive the necessary medical care?
Colm concluded the Workers Party is concerned that under this proposed three tier system that Local and General hospitals will be neglected when it comes to securing medical staff permanently on rotation both types of hospitals will be in rural areas which will suffer the full negative impact. People in rural communities are not second or indeed third class citizens they are entitled to a first class Healthcare system under the founding principles of the NHS.