General practitioners (GPs) could provide a greater level of care for people with chronic disease if they were properly resourced, a leading family doctor has said.
Speaking in advance of the annual meeting of the Irish College of General Practitioners in Galway this weekend, its outgoing chairman, Dr Eamonn Shanahan, said "as we ramp up our activities in prevention, there has to be a transfer of resources from secondary care".
Noting the increasing specialisation of hospital care, Dr Shanahan said the modern GP was well placed to provide much of the "generalist" care formerly provided by the county physician and county surgeon.
"By the nature of their sub-specialisation, hospital teams focus on specific problems; we focus on the whole patient.
"One of the fundamental differences between the care we provide and that provided in hospital is that in hospital the diseases stay and the people come and go; in general practice the people stay and diseases come and go."
While general practice had the capacity to develop chronic care, it must be fully resourced in terms of extra money and the provision of additional support staff.
He called for an extension of the Heartwatch programme to the 80 per cent of the population not covered. Under the programme 240 GPs provide structured preventive care to patients with coronary heart disease. "The programme should also be extended to our modern epidemic; diabetes."