Thomas Gould
Question:231. Deputy Thomas Gould asked the Minister for Health if general practitioners can charge patients on the GMS for a repeat prescription. [10266/22]
View answerWednesday, 23 February 2022
Questions (231)
Written answers
Under the terms of the current GMS contract, GPs are required to provide eligible patients with ''all proper and necessary treatment of a kind usually undertaken by a general practitioner and not requiring special skill or experience of a degree or kind which general practitioners cannot reasonably be expected to possess." There is no provision under the GMS GP contract for persons who hold a medical card or GP visit card to be charged for medical services provided under the contract.
It is a matter for the treating GP to determine in the case of each individual patient what is proper and necessary care. In circumstances where a GP, in the exercise of his/her clinical judgement, determines that a particular treatment or service requested by a patient is not clinically necessary, but the patient still wishes to receive same, it is at the GPs discretion as to whether he/she imposes a charge for providing the service/treatment in question. Consultation fees charged by GPs outside the terms of the GMS contracts are a matter of private contract between the clinicians and their patients.