In my local GP practice – the fees for private patients is €55 per consultation, €10 for repeat scripts, and irrespective of whether one is a private or GMS/GP visit cardholder €25 for practice nurse consultation and to have bloods taken, and a charge schedule for male and female health and travel vaccination charges. The annual flu vaccination programme is also being currently being rolled out within the practice for vulnerable groups at a charge of €35 per private patient – although it is free to GMS or GP visit cardholders.
If you need a sick note for work that will cost a private patient €10 and if you require a DSFA cert the GP will receive a fee of €8.25 from the DSFA for each cert they complete and €44.44 per DSFA medical report.
We have all heard of the payments GP’s received for so called “ghost patients” under the GMS – but GP’s also receive HSE grants as far as I know to employ practice nurses and secretaries when they are participating in the GMS – so why does GP’s levy a charge on cardholders to receive services from a practice nurse when they are receiving grants to employ them under the GMS system maybe something that warrants further investigation.
We also hear that the H1N1 vaccination is also going to be provided by GP’s and that the HSE is going to pay a GP €10 for each vaccination – but my question is whether these GP’s are going to levy an administration charge on private patients so that in addition to receiving the fee from the HSE they will receive a fee from the patient for receiving and administering this vaccination.
We have heard within the health strategy 2001 government vision to strengthen primary healthcare in Ireland so as to ensure that healthcare is delivered in the most appropriate setting ie. primary care environments as opposed to acute hospital care. This strategy was suppose to promote an integrated approach to delivering primary healthcare services by 2011 with the Strategy also identifying that services that were and still are currently provided in hospital services could be provided within a primary healthcare setting. We are now coming to the end of 2009 and my question is how many GP cooperatives has there been delivered under the Primary Health Care Strategy? What is the broad range of services currently provided in GP practice? We obviously have GP’s and practice nurses who provide a minimal range of services and who continue to act as gatekeepers for access to secondary health care – but apart from those provided by private healthcare providers we don’t have public funded minor injury units in primary care, and are far from achieving a model of all services under one roof from community mental health services, social workers, dieticians, speech and language services, home helps, health care assistants, chiropodists, physio, OT’s, psychologists or minor investigations. While government and Mary Harney may profess this to be their vision – we all know that our health infrastructure, nature of GP and primary care system or even our direction in health policy does not support such a model of delivery.
Another poster raised the issue of the medical council – there was an old saying – “there is no accountability in self-regulation”…. whether that person is a doctor, solicitor or accountant. The board of enquiry in the medical council is now composed of both professional and lay members of the public and how effective this new composite will be in terms of delivering greater accountability in this profession is something that maybe will warrant future investigation.