To ask the Minister of Health to detail (i) the status of the Integrated Care Hub operating at the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service control centre; and (ii) whether it is fully funded to continue to operate indefinitely.

NIAS has fully established its Integrated Clinical Hub (ICH) and it is in operation 24-hours per day, 7-days per week with an ICH Service Manager, 8 Clinical Support Managers (CSM) and 23-24 Clinicians in post. In addition, Mental Health Practitioners operate within the ICH, in collaboration with the South Eastern Trust, and provide cover on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.

All clinicians within the ICH are either HCPC Registered Paramedics or NMC Registered Nurses with at least two years’ post registration relevant clinical experience and complete additional training when starting in post. This training takes approximately one month and covers remote telephone assessment, the Manchester Triage System, Control room systems and receive 1:1 mentoring and training by experienced clinicians.

With senior oversight provided by the ICH service manager and CSMs, ICH clinicians assess calls and direct callers to the most appropriate health care using ‘Hear and Treat’ pathways, upgrade calls for a faster response if required, provide remote clinical advice and support to operational colleagues to use ‘See and Treat’ pathways through shared clinical decision making and provide advice to non-clinical control room colleagues.

There has been an increase (48%) in the number of patients treated by the ICH team with 8,982 patients in 2024 compared to 6,087 in 2023.

Recurrent funding is in place for the ICH to continue operation for the foreseeable future, however the Mental Health Practitioner element is only funded until end of the financial year 2025.