The Government’s new rural development plan, Our Rural Future, which was announced last week, includes plans to establish 96 new community healthcare networks (CHNs) across the country. This was already envisaged under Sláintecare, the ten-year programme to transform health and social care services, which was launched in 2018.

The rural plan says the networks will support people to live more independently in their community by coordinating and integrating services “with general practitioners, health and social care professions and nursing leadership at the local level.”

Commenting on the inclusion of the CHNs in the new rural plan, Fórsa’s head of health and welfare, Éamonn Donnelly, said the process of creating the new networks had effectively been underway since the union agreed the creation of nine learning sites to pilot the CHN model. But he said the sites had yet to be evaluated under the terms agreed.

“Covid accelerated some aspects of the process to create these networks, and there are actually 57 enhanced community care networks (ECCNs) under discussion, and in development, as part of the HSE’s Covid response. These include the nine original learning sites.

“The current HSE winter plan, which runs until April 2022, provides for the extension of the ECCNs to the 96 envisaged in Sláintecare, and incorporated into the new rural plan. However, there is significant work to do before that can be completed in a meaningful way, starting with an agreed and comprehensive evaluation of the original nine learning sites.

“The HSE has yet to establish the necessary evaluation groups, and we need to see significant movement on the health and social care professionals’ career pathway review, despite the publication of the independent report last December. We also have concerns on appropriate appointments of network managers and the reporting structures within the CHN model,” he said.

Éamonn and the other members of Fórsa’s national health team met the HSE’s national director of primary care yesterday (Thursday) in order to address the outstanding issues.