“Ramping Up Rollout of Multi-Disciplinary Teams Key to Improving General Practice” Erskine

Mrs Erskine said this would provide solutions to pressures on our health service and improve the patient journey.

The Health Committee Member said.

“The rollout of Multi-Disciplinary Teams across Northern Ireland is a vital element in the transformation of our health service.

It introduces new social work, mental health and physiotherapy roles into general practice, complemented by increased levels of district nursing and health visiting staff, to provide an improved patient journey and reduce overall wait times.

Funding secured by the DUP under the Confidence and Supply Agreement for Health Transformation helped ensure the initial establishment of these teams in Belfast, Down and Londonderry. Rather than the Department extend it out across the rest of Northern Ireland as envisaged, it has been stopped dead in its tracks.

It is disappointing that this early progress was not been seized upon and opportunities to build on this success has been missed. I know from our engagement that this view is strongly shared by those working in primary care and their representative bodies.

No MDTs have yet been established in Fermanagh and South Tyrone to date, causing huge pressures in other areas of our health service.

The MDT model remains the key to stabilising and strengthening Primary Care services. That is why under the DUP plan to fix our health service, we will ramp up the rollout of MDTs to ensure we provide high quality care to our people, now and into the future.”