Doctors' organisations welcomed the primary care proposals, despite reservations about staffing and funding and anger at the delay until 2003 in giving the medical card to a wider group of people, writes Padraig O'Morain, Health and Children Correspondent.
In a rare gesture, the Irish Medical Organisation congratulated the Minister for Health and Children on the launch of a strategy "which firmly establishes general practice as the cornerstone of primary care services in Ireland." But it went on to warn that a delay in extending eligibility for the medical card "would be unacceptable and undermine the health strategy's guiding principles of equity, access and fairness."
"Failure in the forthcoming budget to commit to the extension of the medical card would be a failure to meet the healthcare needs of those 250,000 people who need it most," said Dr James Reilly, chairman of the IMO's general practice committee. "This would only lend currency to those people who say this strategy is no more than an expensive election ploy." But he expressed strong approval of the overall thrust of the strategy document published yesterday.
