Integrated care delivers patient benefits as HSE moves to scale innovation nationally

The HSE’s Integrated Healthcare Conference 2026 brought staff across the health service together to explore how teams are innovating and reimaging how care is delivered by breaking down silos, joining up services and working with patients and service users to put their needs at the centre.

Approximately 400 teams showcased local innovations at the conference as focus turns to scaling connected care across hospital, community, primary and specialist services. This includes common pathways, multidisciplinary teams working across traditional boundaries and better use of data and digital tools, with success measured through improved access, outcomes, experience and sustainability.

The HSE is moving to the next phase of reform, with a focus on scaling approaches that are already delivering better outcomes for patients and making better use of health service capacity. This includes providing more care closer to home, in the community and virtually where appropriate, while ensuring successful models can be adapted across health regions.

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD said: “Integrated care is no longer just a policy ambition of Sláintecare. The focus now is on ensuring integrated care delivers its full potential across every region, every service and every patient pathway for every patient. Across Ireland, healthcare professionals are demonstrating what can be achieved when services work together around the needs of patients and communities. The next phase is to build on that progress, identify what works and scale successful models nationally so that reform delivers the greatest possible benefit for patients.”

Examples from across the health service show the benefits of integrated means for patients in practice. A cardiology model developed by a teams at St Michael’s Hospital and St Vincent’s University Hospital provides rapid GP access to specialist expertise, including virtual review and remote monitoring. Evidence shows that approximately 75% of patients with worsening heart failure can be safely stabilised in the community, releasing acute bed days and offering patients an improved treatment experience.

In palliative care, the Future Care Plan initiative brings together specialist palliative care services, the National Ambulance Service and GPs. Across pilot sites, fewer than 3% of participants died in an acute hospital, compared with a national figure of 39% in 2023, while 81% of patients remained at home following urgent requests for assistance.

HSE CEO Anne O'Connor said: “This conference is not only celebrating innovation, it is creating the connections and practical routes needed to scale it, make better use of existing capacity and embed integrated care as the standard way of delivering healthcare.

“Teams are showing what can be achieved when services work as one connected system. When the health service is under pressure, that is when we need momentum to redesign services around the patient. Many of the solutions to challenges experienced locally already exist within our health service. Our task now is to share them, learn from them and turn the best examples into consistent everyday practice for patients and staff across the country.”

The €240 million Enhanced Community Care Programme, established in 2021 under Sláintecare, is highlighted as one of the strongest examples of integrated care operating at scale. The programme connects general practice, community specialist teams, diagnostics, virtual care and acute pathways to support earlier intervention and bring more care closer to home.

In 2025, community specialist teams delivered more than 1.7 million patient contacts, while community diagnostics supported more than 248,000 tests. The Primary Care Therapy Waiting List Initiative supports reduction in waiting list numbers and waiting times in the areas, where it has been implemented to-date, improving access to essential therapy services. In Dublin North County, more than 1,100 long waiters have been removed from physiotherapy waiting lists, demonstrating the initiative’s impact in translating investment into faster access to care and better patient outcomes.

Across ECC teams, more than 12,700 older people received a Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment and over 83% of those discharged from older persons’ teams returned home. Today, 91% of patients enrolled in the Chronic Disease Management Programme receive their care through their GP rather than an outpatient department. To sustain this shift, GP training intake has been expanded to 400 trainees in 2026, a 25% increase, supporting the long-term capacity of primary care as the foundation of the integrated care model.

Secretary General of the Department of Health Derek Tierney said: “No single service has addressed every challenge, but teams across the health service have developed effective and evidence-based responses to many of them. Our message from today's Integrated Care Conference 2026 to patients and staff, wherever they are in our health service, is clear: people should experience one connected journey of care, supported by teams working together across hospitals, communities, homes and digital services. By sharing what works and bringing it to every part of the country, we can build a health service that is more joined-up, more accessible and more responsive to the people who rely on it and the staff who deliver it every day.”