There are few enough short-term benefits for patients in the health strategy. Certainly there will be minimal impact before people vote in the next election.
The Progressive Democrats-inspired treatment purchase plan offers the best hope of immediate relief for anyone now waiting for treatment. In 2002, a treatment purchase team will be up and running, buying services from both public and private hospitals to meet its targets.
The target for 2002 is a modest one: by the end of next year no adult will wait more than 12 months and no child more than six months for hospital treatment. Great news if you are on a three- year waiting list; not so good if you need urgent cardiac or cancer treatment.
Accident and emergency services are the other area of possible short-term improvement. In truth, the improvements have more to do with ministerial initiatives from last winter rather than yesterday's strategy. Nevertheless, the appointment of 25 new accident and emergency consultants should streamline the treatment and reduce waiting times for people requiring urgent medical attention.
Patients will have to look to the medium- and long-term for the real benefits of "Quality and Fairness - A Health System for You". It will be at least five years before there is a sense of nationwide improvement in our health service.
It will take until then to train the extra occupational therapists, speech therapists and other paramedical staff which the strategy needs in order for it to work.
With a lead-in time of four years to completion of training, it will be 2006 at the earliest before services for the elderly and those in community care can be significantly improved so as to make a difference.
Not that the strategy can be criticised for its plans for older people; it is one of the clearest parts of the document in terms of targets for extra day-hospital and community nursing beds.
Patients should also welcome the strong emphasis on creating a patient-centred healthcare system. For the first time they are set to have a real voice in the planning of services at a local level.
Drawing on the positive experience of involving those with disabilities in service planning, the document commits health boards to establishing consumer panels in each area. If properly implemented, this will ensure a community involvement in the planning and feedback of healthcare.
And although much is made in the document of strengthened complaints procedures for patients, it is surely in everyone's interest to maximise feedback and patient influence to the point where they improve the service before a complaints impasse is ever reached.
Another significant change, about which we will hear more detail tomorrow, is a change in the way primary care will be provided. The Minister devoted almost a page of his speech to primary care, saying that it would lead to "better outcomes, better health status and better cost effectiveness".
The primary care document which was leaked to The Irish Times during the summer is clearly still firmly at the centre of the Department's strategy.
Patients will, in future, access primary care from a "one-stop shop" where teams, rather than individual practitioners, will be available for self-referral. The message from this part of the strategy is that GPs and others will be responsible for reducing the demand for specialist services.
There are two major disappointments associated with yesterday's launch.
One is the failure to show how specific amounts of money will follow each element of "the grand plan", a view highlighted by IMO president Dr Mick Molloy.
The other is the absence of a meaningful reform of health boards. Awash as they are with administrators, most commentators were expecting a reduction in the number of health boards in the State.
Failure to confront this issue is a bad sign for the future should "parish-pump politics" begin to inhibit the strategy's implementation.
However, we must welcome the strategy's broad canvas. There are enough specific targets to ensure that it will be possible to monitor progress. Of course, without money it will all be for nought and so the absence of a prolonged recession will be essential for the strategy to succeed.
The document gives all of us - and especially patients - a yardstick to judge our future health service: notably, the presence of equity, accountability and quality with the patient at its heart.