Patients face two-week wait for GP appointment

On Monday, the Department of Health announced a review of general practice, less than six months after confirming that an extra 430,000 people will be eligible for medical cards.

Cork GP Trish Horgan said her practice already had to change appointment times for non-urgent cases.

“The wait tends to be two to three weeks,” said Dr Horgan. “We try to see people who are sick on the day, sick children are seen on the day.

“The Government has moved to dramatically increase the number of medical cards before the strategic review is completed.

“That doesn’t seem to make sense to anybody. Without the data there to show there is capacity, I’m not sure how meaningful increasing cards will be.”

Currently, only about 420 of more than 3,000 GPs offer medical abortions. These patients are considered urgent patients, said Dr Horgan, a member of the Southern Taskforce On Abortion and Reproductive Topics (Start).

“My concern is capacity could affect the sustainability of the service,” she said. “It would be something that future providers would see as a barrier to taking on the service.

“Capacity affects everything, but abortion care is so time-sensitive that it is critical it is dealt with in a day or two. It’s hard to see GPs being able to carve that time out if they are suddenly completely overburdened.

“Abortion care is so time-sensitive it is possible it will be disproportionately affected by capacity issues.”

The Irish Medical Organisation also warned about longer waits for appointments.

“It is absolutely the case that, in order to manage demand, the vast majority have wait times of two weeks or more for routine appointments,” it said. 

“In the midst of the crisis in GP numbers and such a demand for appointments, that the Government would seek to expand the service by upwards of 500,000 patients, will only serve to worsen an already challenging situation.”

No family doctor

In Kerry, Gary Stack highlighted a “new phenomenon” of people who do not have a family doctor. Dr Stack is medical director of SouthDoc, where people are now seen for routine conditions in a service designed for out-of-hours emergencies.

“A lot of it is people can’t access a GP in the day, and they’ve no hope of accessing tomorrow,” said Dr Stack. “So they end up in SouthDoc, either due to demand in the [day] practice or they can’t get a GP.”

He is concerned the tradition of same-day service is being lost.

“Unfortunately, in recent times, GPs have introduced no longer having a same-day service, and once that genie is out of the bottle it’s going to be very hard to put it back, in most practices really.”

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said yesterday that State-funded access to GPs is normal across Europe.

He told RTÉ medical card changes “would result in about an extra three visits per GP who has medical card lists per week”.