Letter: We need to stop talking about reforming our health service and actually do it
A letter from Jack Irwin:
I’ve just watched ‘Sunday Politics’ on the issue of our dreadfully failing health service and all we seem to do is talk about it
The horrendous problems in our health service can be very simply resolved if we get rid of the vested interests therein.
What we need is to do away with the trusts and boards and the high levels of personnel associated with all of those, which for a population of less than two million we most definitely don’t need.
This would obviously free up funds for the ‘frontline’.
Instead, have as we do in education one chief executive and an appropriate board of clinicians, nursing staff, paramedics, ambulance service representatives, unions and qualified business and administrative people with no ‘hangers on’.
Procurement, which squanders millions of pounds every year, would of course have to be very much a part of such reform!
The transition required would most definitely be difficult but well worth the effort to achieve a modern, patient-orientated and efficient health service much sought after by our long suffering citizens, not to mention the magnificent staff who care for us day and daily.
At the end of the day, our health is by far the most important thing in our lives so let’s stop the waffling and get on with it.
Jack Irwin, Bangor, County Down