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Primary Care Services.

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 1 November 2006

Wednesday, 1 November 2006

Questions (7)

Aengus Ó Snodaigh

Question:

88 Aengus Ó Snodaigh asked the Minister for Health and Children the progress on the delivery of the network of primary care centres promised in the programme for Government; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35470/06]

View answer

Oral answers (3 contributions)

The primary care strategy is the roadmap for the future development of primary care services in Ireland over a period of ten years, both as the appropriate service for the delivery of the majority of people's health and social care needs and to complement the services provided by acute hospitals. At the heart of the strategy is the aim of developing services in the community to give people direct access to integrated multi-disciplinary teams of general practitioners, nurses, health care assistants, home helps, occupational therapists and others.

I was encouraged to learn that in excess of 1,000 general practitioners replied to invitations from Health Service Executive local health managers for expressions of interest to become involved in the further development of primary care services and, in particular, in the formation of primary care teams either this year or in coming years. The HSE has been working with stakeholders to finalise arrangements for the establishment of a significant number of primary care teams in development in 2006. The HSE envisaged that between 75 and 100 would be established in 2006 and it has indicated that it expects this target to be achieved.

As part of this development process, the HSE advertised in September for applications for up to 300 additional frontline health professionals from a range of disciplines and this recruitment process is approaching completion. A considerable amount of work is being undertaken by the executive to realign HSE services to give best efficiencies for team-working and to determine ideal team compositions to meet the needs of identified areas.

The HSE has informed me that work will also commence during 2006 with GPs who will help to form teams in 2007 and my Department will continue to work with the HSE to monitor progress in this regard.

Is the Government still committed to the primary care strategy? For instance, what has happened to the ten pilot projects established under that strategy? What about the roll-out of the network of primary care centres that were to have been put in place? What is the status of that proposition at this point?

Will the Department carry out a comprehensive survey of GP cover area by area throughout the country? Why has the Department not already done so, recognising that there are large swathes of this jurisdiction where GP cover is clearly inadequate and where locally-based GPs are making heroic efforts to provide cover to their dependent communities? It is not only in rural areas in different parts of the State that there is inadequate GP cover but it is also a fact of life in many urban centres, including, in particular, the north inner city area of Dublin.

On the need for additional trained medical cover, what is being done to increase the number of training places for medical students who intend to go and are committed to going into general practice?

Taking the last question first, we have increased the number of training posts by, I believe, approximately 17 this year. The college was not able to deal with anymore. I hope we can increase that further next year and provision is being made to do so. A number of general practitioners are prohibited under an industrial relations agreement with the Irish Medical Organisation to practice as general practitioners under the GMS scheme and that is a matter I am examining.

The primary care strategy is being rolled out differently from the ten pilot projects because it would take an enormous amount of time and money to do so on that type of basis. In regard to the manner in which it was rolled out last year, 1,000 GPs applied and 75 to 100 will be supported. We hope to do the same next year and by 2008, we hope to have rolled it out to approximately 300 further GP practices. It will be done on the basis of the initiative funded in 2006.

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