Culling of medical cards

Sir, – GPs around the country will echo the sentiments expressed by Dr Brendan Crowley (December 27th) about the undue stress and hardship imposed on patients by the HSE in its efforts to cull medical cards. I and my GP colleagues see the problems every day in our surgeries when patients who are entitled to medical cards have had their cards revoked in the so-called "cull".

Even the HSE itself expressed serious concern at the practice and the potential savings, following which we saw a much-welcomed U-turn by the Minister, upon the announcement of the HSE Service Plan (whereby the savings to be achieved in the cull were significantly reduced).

The mantra of Government is that everyone who is entitled to a medical card will receive one; if only that were true. The bureaucratic nonsense that is the current system is causing distress to already vulnerable patients.

As GPs we have engaged with the Primary Care Reimbursement Service to ensure the medical card database is accurate, however, at the end of the day it is the responsibility of the HSE, as the recorder of births and deaths to maintain an accurate database. It is neither practical nor desirable that this be the responsibility of GPs. However, more needs to be done by the HSE to ensure that the system is manageable and transparent.

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This debacle over the medical cards is another example of the lack of IT development in the health services generally. This must be urgently addressed if we are to seriously tackle inefficiencies in the system. – Yours, etc,

Dr RAY WALLEY,

Chairman, GP Committee,

Irish Medical Organisation,

Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2.