‘Patients face longer waits due to lack of funding for cross border healthcare’ – McGrath | Newry News

SDLP Opposition Health Spokesperson Colin McGrath MLA has said it is deeply regrettable that patients will face longer waits for treatment due to a lack of funding for cross-border healthcare.

He was speaking after Health Minister Mike Nesbitt confirmed that a bid for funding to reinstate the patient reimbursement scheme was not included in the Executive budget.

Mr McGrath urged the Finance Minister to urgently explore funding the scheme.

South Down MLA Mr McGrath says, “Cross-border healthcare has been an incredible help to people here, reducing waiting list times for patients on both sides of the border.

“I recently wrote to the Health Minister to request he consider reintroducing the initiative to help reduce our waiting lists, which have never been as high as they are at present.

“In his response, the Minister made clear that were the scheme to be reintroduced it could have served over 4000 people this year alone.

“However, the budget allocation provided by the Minister of Finance falls well short of what was anticipated.

“So much so that there remains a gap of £293 million in HSC Trust funding, and as a result the cross border initiative cannot be reintroduced.

“The Finance Minister must do more to close this funding shortfall.

“We are not hearing much from our Executive at present.

“We still have no Programme for Government, and this only leaves people wondering what is going on.

“We have seen the difference this scheme made to patients, particularly with orthopaedic treatments which made up an average of 87% of cross-border treatments, followed by ophthalmology treatments which were the second most common speciality.

“Given the pressures we are facing I think we need to do everything possible to reinstate this scheme.

“I have written to the Finance Minister to request an update on this and what efforts she has put into closing this funding shortfall.

“If we do not start addressing our broken health service then we are facing an incredibly bleak picture for the future.”

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Posted by NewryTimes News on Aug 5 2024. Filed under Community, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry