The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, yesterday urged family doctors and other professionals to work together to ensure the new £1.5 billion model of primary care can be put in place.
The model, which will involve the formation of primary care teams across the State to cater for a variety of patients' needs on one site, is to be implemented over the next 10 years.
The teams will operate from "one-stop-shops" and will include GPs, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, psychologists, home helps and other healthcare professionals. The essential services will be provided on a 24-hour basis.
At the launch of the plan, Mr Martin said nobody could disagree there was an "urgent need" for reform of the primary care sector.
He claimed all stakeholders would be winners - family doctors, half of whom have no secretarial support, could look forward to better back-up and a better quality of life, and patients would be able to access services on a single site in their community, he said.
He said the management of the primary care teams would be critical to ensure the problems hospitals now faced, such as waiting lists, were not transferred down the line to GP-led primary care teams.
"The management of these primary care teams is going to have to be critical to make sure we don't run into logjams, blockages and so forth.
"There is a lot of detail to be worked out in terms of implementation. I think you are going to look at leaner, fitter organisations that will be far more effective and efficient," he said.
He added that the issue of who would control the primary care teams still had to be worked out. "There is a number of ways you can actually build the infrastructure and one option could very well be public private-partnerships".
GPs, he said, would not have to become State employees under the new system, but that may be an option for them. They would not be forced into it.
He said a task force, to be set up in January to implement the plan, would work with health boards and professionals to decide the locations for each primary care team. They would be located in disadvantaged as well as well off communities, he confirmed.
"This is very much a collaboration between all of the interests. It's not the State just going in imposing a statist approach to the project," he said.
He added that the new system wouldn't undermine the traditional role of the GP referring patients to hospital.
"I don't see an occupational therapist referring somebody to hospital. I would say there would be consultations with the GP in that team environment and a decision would then be made by the team to refer somebody to hospital".
Mr Martin emphasised the public wanted community-based, well-integrated, round-the-clock services that were easy to reach. The plan would deliver on this but all the changes would take time, he said.
"Many other countries are introducing similar reforms and there is a wealth of evidence which tells us that team-based primary care is better for both patients and providers."