To ask the Minister of Health for his assessment of the performance of Urgent Care Centre services on the Ulster Hospital site.

The provision of Urgent Care services remains a key priority for the DoH in the implementation of the Urgent & Emergency Care Review. The South Eastern Trust has received recurrent funding of £6,486,363 from the No More Silos programme, to establish a range of Urgent Care pathways based predominantly on the Ulster Hospital site, that will be accessible via both GPs and the local phone first service. These Urgent Care services include the Enhanced Minor Injuries service, in the former ED, which aligns with the strategic direction of keeping EDs for emergencies only and scheduling unscheduled care.

As part of the commissioning of these services, the SPPG Hospital Services and Finance Directorates will be working with the Trust over the coming months to assess the impact of recent investments and the Trust’s performance against its peers. If South Eastern Trust is an outlier, SPPG will be seeking to understand the reasons for this and any further actions to improve service delivery.

Currently Urgent and emergency care data for clinical care episodes completed on or after 9th November 2023 in SEHSCT are not currently available due to the Trust’s transition to completely digitised health records. It is therefore not possible to provide an assessment of the performance of Urgent Care Services on the Ulster site.

All Trust urgent care services form part of the SPPG’s wider Unscheduled Care performance meetings with Trusts, to support the oversight and evidence the continued impact of these services for our local populations. The SPPG Unscheduled Care Team will be monitoring performance against this.