Just what Ireland’s health service needed.

Another strategy plan.

You have been waiting for it, haven’t you, and yes here it is at last.

The Sláintecare Action Plan 2022, just published by the Department of Health in Ireland.

This is the latest update on the health reform programme that promises a better public health service for all, sometime in the future.

The plan promises to treat 75,000 patients this year who are on active waiting lists, for inpatient, or day care surgery or treatment.

It says that by the end of this year, the number of people on active waiting lists will be the lowest in five years.

Big promises, but we have heard these before.

The plan also envisages that three new ‘elective’  (planned operations only) hospitals will be built in Cork, Dublin ands Galway – eventually but with no actual completion dates.

The problem with these promises is that the timescales are wooly and so often in the health service there is a failure to deliver on targets, for one excuse or another.

But maybe this time it will be different?

However, it seems unlikely that the tide of patients going for healthcare abroad, under the EU Cross Border Directive, will diminish anytime soon.

And of course these new waiting list targets for 2022 will all be overseen by, wait for it, a Waiting List Task Force.

So now we have a new health plan and a new task force.