Ireland prepares for healthcare reform:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Ireland has launched a major audit of the healthcare system, ahead of a reform aimed at ensuring that it is in "the best position to deliver the goals of the new Health Strategy". The audit will consider how best to rationalise the system, to ensure that it is responsive to current and future needs, provides an adequate governance framework and effectively integrates all services. The overall structure of the interrelationship between the health boards and the new agencies, created to address the new needs and expectations, needs to be reviewed, said the department of health. The system has remained largely unchanged for 30 years, despite wide-ranging social change, it added. "The audit is of strategic significance in the roll-out of the Health Strategy and the reshaping of our health system," said minister Micheal Martin of the initiative. The audit report is due to be published in December 2002.