Chamber and committees

I would like to pick up the rural aspect of the issue with Jeff Ace and Dr Coldwells. I imagine that you will come up with similar answers, but I will come to Dr Coldwells first. What particular challenges do you foresee health boards with large rural areas having, and how will you deal with them?

We will move on to questions on funding. I ask that members direct their questions to particular witnesses. If other witnesses want to come in, they should put an R in the chat box so that I know to bring them in. With the best will in the world, I do not think that we will have time for every question to be answered by all three witnesses, but it was useful for that to happen on the previous two occasions because it gave us an overview.

If the other witnesses want to comment on anything that they are doing locally, they are welcome to do so. Otherwise, we will move on to our next question, which is on accident and emergency waiting times.

As Dr Armstrong is nodding, I will bring her in.

Thank you. Sandesh Gulhane also has a specific question on this issue.

We have a couple of questions on delayed discharges. The first is from Carol Mochan.

Thank you for clarifying that. We might want to look into that in a bit more detail.

I invite Dr Coldwells to comment, after which we will take one final question from Tess White, but we must then move on to our next item.

Sandesh, the theme of these questions is waiting times and cancelled operations so, if you do not mind, I will ask a question on that. If I have time, I will come back to you, but lots of people want to ask questions and we still have lots of themes to get through. Thank you.

I want to bring the discussion back to the subject of avoiding cancelled operations. You mentioned the backlog that is a result of the pandemic, and you have referenced some of the things that you are trying to do to address it. I am happy to hear more about that, but how do you plan to avoid cancellations of a non-clinical nature? Covid is still out there, and there are staff absences. I am thinking of any pressures that might cause cancellations this winter. What are you doing to avoid those?

I want to bring in James Dornan before we move on to talk about bed numbers.

I will bring in Paul O’Kane, to be followed by David Torrance.

I think that Paul’s connection might have frozen, so I will come back to him.