The National Health Strategy's main points:
Improve patients' rights to information and redress where service is inadequate;
Involve the private sector in building hospitals to increase capacity;
Provide 500 extra acute hospital beds within a year;
Provide 6,000 community care beds by 2006;
House private hospital beds in separate buildings to public facilities;
Set targets for hospital managers to improve efficiency;
Create primary care teams involving GPs and health specialists including nurses and physiotherapists in the community;
Cut numbers using accident and emergency units to allow for more serious cases;
Ensure public patients are not left waiting longer than private patients;
Create a special Cabinet sub-committee on health to assess all government policies;
Improve all public health programmes;
Extend medical cards to intellectually and physically disabled;
Implement a national suicide prevention strategy;
Overhaul management and IT standards in all health agencies;
Work to attract and keep talented staff within health services.