AQW 20619/22-27
Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry
Tabled Date: 15/01/2025
Answered On Date: 30/01/2025
Priority Written: No
Question:
To ask the Minister of Health whether he has any plans to review health and social care pathways, in order to offer patients various options of healthcare that consider individual circumstances and quality of life rather than following a standard pathway for a particular ailment.
Answer:
My Department fully supports the responsive provision of choices and options for patients in where and how they receive their care where this can be done safely and cost effectively within available resources. Clinical care pathways aim to standardise arrangements and reduce variation in care in line with best practice to optimise outcomes. Notwithstanding this approach, HSC providers will routinely endeavour, where clinically safe and operationally possible to do so, to accommodate patient choice in respect of where and how treatment is delivered. In most instances these arrangements will relate to providing care as close as possible to the patient’s home. Some types of care pathway will include options and choices consistent with the needs of specific cohorts. For example, in palliative care, pathways support the delivery of co-ordinated services to enable people with palliative and end of life care needs to have choice in their place of care, greater access to services and improved outcomes at the end of their lives. Highly specialised services, such as liver or heart transplants, are not delivered locally as our small population cannot support the volume of activity to maintain the skills needed for these complex procedures. Highly specialised services are only provided in a very small number of NHS accredited providers in GB. Although this involves travel and limits choice, these arrangements ensure that patients from Northern Ireland can be assured of equitable access to the best care the NHS can offer.
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