Plans for the transformation of services in the northeast are to be broadened and accelerated, HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm has told staff.
Prof Drumm said that in addition to the planned reform of hospital services, which will see the development of a new regional acute centre, community facilities will also be reconfigured to support the new arrangements.
Up to 40 primary care teams are to be developed in the northeast as part of the reconfiguration of primary, community and continuing care services (PCCC).
Prof Drumm said there would also be changes to how the programme was administered and governed.
A new full-time manager has been appointed to lead the implementation of the transformation programme on the ground while the membership of the overall steering group directing the programme has been expanded. Prof Drumm will in future be a member of the steering group.
A HSE spokeswoman said yesterday that the integration envisaged in the northeast between the hospital and community services would act as a blueprint that could be rolled out in other parts of the country.
In a memo to staff in recent days, Prof Drumm said significant progress had been made on reconfiguring hospital services "particularly as regards developing clinical networks".
However, he said it had become clear to the steering committee in the northeast, the HSE leadership team and to himself that there was now a requirement "to broaden and accelerate implementation of elements of the transformation programme" for the area.
"It has also become clear that we need to rebalance the emphasis of this work so that it fully reflects the complete HSE's transformation programme including the significant reconfiguration necessary within the PCCC services which is essential for the effective reconfiguration of hospital services," he said.
Prof Drumm said he had appointed Stephen Mulvany, assistant national director of finance, as overall full-time programme manager for the project.
Later in the year the HSE is to decide on the controversial question of the location of the new regional acute hospital for the northeast. The HSE has said that the planned regional hospital will provide services for which patients in the northeast currently have to travel to Dublin.
The new regional hospital will provide 24-hour emergency care for trauma, emergency surgery and emergency medicine. It will also provide critical care, cancer, maternity, complex planned surgery, acute psychiatry, paediatrics and neonatology services.
When it is developed, existing hospitals in the northeast will be designated as local hospitals.
