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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 17 Jun 1998

Vol. 492 No. 5

Written Answers. - Medical Cards.

Michael P. Kitt

Ceist:

90 Mr. M. Kitt asked the Minister for Health and Children the reason the new style laminated medical card for the Western Health Board area is being printed in Dublin; the cost involved; the reason for the delay involved in issuing medical cards to people in the Western Health Board region; the efforts, if any, made to have the cards printed locally; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14544/98]

The decision to introduce plastic medical cards was made by the chief executive officers of the health boards following consideration of the report of the medical card review group. This is a separate group to that established consequent to the commitment in the programme for Government — An Action Programme for the Millennium — to review medical card eligibility for large families and the elderly, which recommended the use of smart card technology to replace the existing paper cards in order to reduce the cost of illegible prescriptions, estimated to amount to approximately £10 million per annum. The introduction of plastic medical cards is phase 1 of that process.

The General Medical Services (Payments) Board at the request of the chief executive officers of the eight health boards undertook to make arrangements for the issue of laminated medical cards to the entire national population of approximately 1.2 million eligible cardholders.

In compliance with the relevant EU public procurement directives, the GMS (Payments) Board invited tenders for the supply and delivery of laminated cards. As a result of that process, two orders for contracts were placed: one for the supply of the cards and the second for the personalisation and mailing of the cards. The total final costs for the Western Health Board are not yet available as the GMS (Payments) Board is awaiting invoices in respect of certain aspects of the contract only recently completed. However, an approximate figure would be in the region of £45,000, excluding postage costs of about £96,000. The GMS (Payments) Board has agreed to meet all costs associated with the changeover.

The WHB made the decision to replace its medical card system towards the end of 1997 with a view to ensuring that that system and the hospital systems would be compatible. The replacement system will also deal with the Year 2000 compliance problem. Following the appointment of a supplier of the new medical card system, the decision was made by the WHB that the new system should be in place by end March or early April of this year. Accordingly, when a schedule of implementation dates for issuing the laminated medical cards was being prepared the WHB requested the GMS (Payments) Board to allow it be the last health board to issue the new cards. This was done by the WHB in order to ensure that the new medical card system would not be introduced at the same time as the introduction of the laminated medical cards and was based on the WHB's experience of implementing new computer systems.

A further time factor involved was that at the time of implementation, the Midland, Mid-Western and Southern Health Boards all shared the same medical card system. That common system had to be amended and the implementation schedule was adjusted to recognise this. In addition, there was a need to change the schedule to accommodate implementation in the MHB area.
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