AS the Health Minister arrived at Tuesday’s emergency meeting of the Health Committee, he was immediately assured by chairperson Liz Kimmins he wasn’t there to be attacked.
Not unlike the mood of a disciplinary meeting, his arrival was preceded by multiple critical statements from MLAs and health workers making clear how crippling pressure was putting patients in harm’s way.
Despite the bluster, the tone of MLAs was largely one of agreement - that the entire Executive needed to finally show up for patients on issues like funding the social care needed to discharge patients from hospitals bursting at the seams.
After listing details from his winter preparedness plan and noting that rising flu levels were a problem across the UK, Mr Nesbitt challenged MLAs to do more than snipe at him without bringing solutions.
“It appears to me that certain MLAs engage only after the fact, when the opportunity arises to criticise without alternatives,” he said.
He also pledged to end minimum wage employment in social care with an extra £50m in employment, an increased focus on multi-disciplinary teams to take pressure off GPs and announced flu vaccinations would now be available to the over 50s.
Hoping to show vulnerable patients languishing in hospital corridors he was listening, he told the committee of visiting no less than two emergency departments on Tuesday morning – Altnagelvin and the Ulster Hospital.
This included a man that had been sitting in a chair at Altnagelvin for four days.
“Where’s the dignity, where’s the privacy because that chair’s in the corridor,” he said.
Later, Mr Nesbitt’s voice cracked when he mentioned meeting a terminally ill patient on Tuesday who didn’t have a hospital bed.
“He was just full of praise for the staff, for the nurses and the doctors.
“Talking about people being worse off than he is, he’s dying.
“All healthcare is personal, and I have to take this really personally otherwise I can’t do it.”
Asked if his Executive colleagues actually had his back, Mr Nesbitt said his feeling was that he had been told “just get on with it” after receiving half of the block grant, despite a higher assessment of need.
A more challenging tone eventually came from the SDLP’s Colin McGrath, who urged Mr Nesbitt to push the Executive for a collective response to the “crisis” in healthcare.
In a statement, Mr McGrath also called the meeting “misguided” and accused Executive parties of “posturing” over reform.
He added: “We must hear concrete plans around a way forward. The Executive cannot allow this situation to deteriorate further with disastrous consequences for patients and health staff.”
