Actual Planning with Data

A sensible statement about health planning for once. Imagine using actual data to plan capacity:

Ireland needs to use demographic information for the provision of long-term health strategies in the same as the country plans for education, Minister for Health Simon Harris has said.

Mr Harris accepted he had to deal with day to day issues in the health service but said he believed it was important to take a more long-term view to tackle recurring problems.

“If you look at what we have done with education over the last few decades, we now know from a demographic point of view there will be this number of school children next year requiring a school place and we provide an adequate number of teachers, school places and school buildings.”

“I don’t honestly believe over the last decade or two, successive governments have done that same level of detailed demographic analysis – this year in Ireland there will be 34,000 more people – there will be 3,000 more people over the age of 85 and 20,000 to30,000 more people over the age of 65.”

“We know as we get older we are more likely to rely on our health service and we also know we are more likely to have multiple health issues. Yet that analysis has not been mapped out in terms of the delivery of health services.

Source: Use demographic data to plan health services, says Harris