HEALTHCARE
I support the manifesto: 'Our Plan for Guernsey: 2025-29 And Beyond'.
SMARTER, SUSTAINABLE HEALTH AND CARE
Everyone should have the security of high-quality, affordable health and social care services when they need them. Guernsey’s current system must adapt to cope with an ageing population, rising medical costs, and a fragmented structure. As a small island, we face inevitable risks and limitations, but we also have the opportunity to build a smarter model. With strong leadership and a shared commitment to change, we can create a sustainable system that is fairer, simpler, and accessible for more islanders. By reducing duplicated costs and making care pathways clearer, we can build a healthier future where everyone gets the care they need, when they need it.
Key policies we support
Focusing on retaining local staff by ensuring they feel appreciated, supported, and properly rewarded.
Ensuring that new residents who aren’t paying social security contributions on earnings will need to have health insurance.
Empowering frontline expertise by piloting a clinically-led reform programme, ensuring those who understand the challenges first hand drive and champion meaningful change.
Appointing a Mental Health Champion from the Committee for Health & Social Care to work with other committees and the charity sector to ensure mental health is a priority.
FASTER ACCESS, FEWER BARRIERS
Guernsey’s healthcare needs streamlining. Our system has heavily drawn on the UK for its design and relies on the primary care system, such as GPs, as the main referral gateway, meaning patients often need to cover personal costs when they seek care. While this is very accessible, it is not efficient or always needed. It’s time to bring our system in line with the best models of care.
We support:
Completing the Primary Care review, focusing on key issues that matter to the community, such as the cost and accessibility of repeat prescriptions for long-term health conditions.
Ensuring prescriptions are reviewed when patients enter healthcare settings, removing prescriptions where appropriate to improve healthcare, cut costs, and minimise waste.
Streamlining clinical pathways to increase the role of other practitioners such as pharmacists or physiotherapists and improve the patient experience, including access to secondary care.
Maximising the use of specialist practitioners by sharing expertise across services, such as Advanced Practitioners supporting both the Emergency Department and St. John’s Ambulance & Rescue Service. • Adopting the Supporting Living and Ageing Well Strategy (SLAWS) within six months and then begin implementing the plan that has been developed over the past decade to meet future demand, and help deliver 132 more care beds by 2030.
PRIORITISING OUR ISLAND’S MENTAL HEALTH
Mental health services are more important than ever, especially for young people. Many are still struggling with the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The causes are complex, but more importantly the results are tragic if the root causes are not sensitively dealt with.
We support:
Appointing a Mental Health Champion from the Committee for Health & Social Care to work with other committees and the charity sector to ensure mental health is a priority.
Working with charities to help people get the right support for their precise needs. Those with serious mental health issues may require professional help at all hours, while others might only need advice or support if it is less urgent.
Recognising the devastating impact of endemic Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) by collecting data to assess the current situation in Guernsey with a view to replicating Jersey’s recent VAWG Taskforce.
SMARTER, MORE EFFICIENT SYSTEMS
Our health and social care system is our biggest public expense, and costs to maintain it have been rising. We need to keep it efficient and affordable for everyone.
We support:
Setting a 1% savings target each year for contracted medical providers. The money saved will be used to create a self-financing programme of innovation and reform in healthcare.
Empowering frontline expertise by piloting a clinically-led reform programme, ensuring those who understand the challenges first-hand drive and champion meaningful change.
Cutting costs, not care, by working to share back-office functions (such as finance and procurement) across healthcare providers, reducing duplication, and lowering costs.
Focusing on retaining local staff by ensuring they feel appreciated, supported, and properly rewarded. • Promoting training for all healthcare professionals, on island where possible.
Conducting a review of how healthcare providers pay for insurance, exploring a single-provider system to cut costs and save taxpayer money.
FAIR AND REASONABLE ACCESS
All new residents currently get immediate access to healthcare in Guernsey (in Jersey, residents must wait six months). Whilst this is generous, it is an unfair burden on taxpayers - new residents should make an appropriate contribution before using our system.
We support:
Revising the rules so that adult dependents of new residents must live here for a minimum period before accessing healthcare benefits.
Ensuring that new residents who aren’t paying social security contributions on earnings will need to have health insurance.
POWERING YOUR CARE WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY
Effectively integrating new medical technologies into our health and care systems will improve the way we deliver these services. Having quick and easy access to your personal medical data will help you receive the best, most efficient care at a lower cost. We recognise your data belongs to you, not your healthcare provider.
We support:
Examining the benefits of new legislation creating a Single Patient Record to allow patient data to be securely and efficiently shared between providers - reducing costs and improving patient outcomes.
Pioneering a healthcare call centre to better allocate resources, improve access, and meet patient needs. This will support, where appropriate, virtual monitoring models of care to help patients stay in their own homes for as long as possible.