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The new Health Minister has announced that she will suspend the Jersey Care Model while a review is carried out.
The model – a five-year plan introduced by the last government to provide more care at home and the community – was approved by the States Assembly in November 2020.
The cost of bringing the project to fruition is estimated to be around £700m - but the Government has previously said that it will result in savings of £874m by 2036.
After being delayed by the pandemic, it officially started on 1 January last year, although so far much of the work has been about getting the structures in place, including the establishment of an ‘Independent Oversight Board’ to assess progress against targets.
Some services under the model, however, have started, including a new Overnight Community Care service and the launch of ‘HCS24’ – a non-emergency hotline.
A number of digital projects, such as consolidating patient records, have also begun.
In one of its first moves, the new Government has put the Jersey Care Model on ice.
The decision was announced by new Health Minister Karen Wilson, who has 35 years' experience as a nurse and working in leading roles in the NHS, in her first speech in the Assembly on Monday, shortly after she was nominated by Chief Minister Kristina Moore.
Pictured: The new Health Minister, Karen Wilson.
Deputy Wilson said: “Aligned to the new hospital is the development of the Jersey Care Model. While we need to redesign community services to address future challenges, there are just too many public concerns about its design, funding and resourcing to allow it to continue in its current form.
“We have to consider if it is right for Jersey and will ask officers to pause its implementation until we are in a better position to understand the cost and resourcing issues involved.”
The budgeted cost of the JCM, including its parallel Digital Health Project, in the last Government Plan (2022-25) was more than £44m.
The money is coming from the Health Insurance Fund, which is funded by Social Security contributions and subsidises GP visits, prescriptions and other primary care services.
During her pitch to become the new Health Minister yesterday, Karen Wilson said that, as well as pausing the JCM, her priorities would be:
the opening of Clinique Pinel;
the new hospital review already proposed by Deputy Moore;
launching a new Health Strategy designed to improve public health;
a public involvement strategy;
securing immediate workforce supply solutions for the housing and licensing of healthcare staff;
setting out direction for health and social care over the winter period;
a digital health agenda.
The previous government argued that too much routine treatment and care was focused on the hospital.
Because of this, it argued that the hospital dealt with around 30,000 Emergency Department patient visits a year that weren’t emergencies, and at least 40,000 outpatient visits to treat long-term conditions that it said could have been better managed by GPs.
It also said that the Health didn’t provide good enough preventative care and didn’t do enough to help islanders manage their own conditions, such as diabetes.
It was also critical of the integration of mental health services with physical ones, and overnight care.
The JCM was designed to provide outpatients appointments in the community, promote more primary care services, establish an urgent treatment centre to make sure A&E is only used for genuine emergencies, make greater use of partner agencies such as Family Nursing and care providers; and provide more on-island cancer care.
However the model has had its fair share of critics, including those opposed to the new hospital at Overdale.
Critics question why, if more care is going to be in the home and community, why is the government spending £804m on a hospital.
They have also raised concerns about where the staff needed to provide care in the community are going to be found, considering the current difficulties in recruitment.
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