In a five-page response to concerns raised by the group, the minister says that any changes to the primary-care model ‘will be co-designed with primary-care colleagues and a wide range of stakeholders as part of the Jersey Care Model programme’.
Issues concerning primary care were highlighted last week by former Social Security chief officer Anne Esterson, who pointed out that the rebate or subsidy to GPs for consultations had not increased since 2012. The average cost to patients is now £50.
Asked about the state of negotiations with bodies involved in primary care, including GPs – who expressed their opposition last year to the government’s plans – the minister responded: ‘The Jersey Care Model programme is a five-year programme and therefore we are still in the early stages of delivery.
‘Discussions with key stakeholders on intermediate care have progressed well and more detailed conversations on service design for other elements of care delivery will continue later this year.’
In his letter to the group’s representative, Stephen Regal, Deputy Renouf said that the government had responded on a number of occasions to the Jersey Friends of the New Hospital group.
However, he reaffirmed that the new hospital would be a ‘general hospital’, including ‘all the acute, general and specialist services currently provided at the Jersey General Hospital as well as enhanced facilities for the assessment, investigation and treatment of conditions that are currently not provided for on-Island’.
He said that the new care model, approved last year by the States, would move some services into the community and highlighted rehabilitation, which would ‘be provided in a more modern and effective rehab provision’; physiotherapy, which would be provided in community services; and the pain clinic, which would provide a service ‘delivered in the most appropriate location dependent on the care circumstances of the patient, which may be in hospital or the community’.
In an open response to the minister – which seeks further detail on a number of points – the group say that the aspirations of the care model have yet to be described in sufficient detail to show whether they are influencing the design of the new hospital.
