HSE says medical card system problems will be resolved soon

Technical problems which have disabled the State's medical card system for nearly a week are expected to be resolved on Tuesday, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has said.

The HSE said its systems were “operational” and it expected that all services would be restored during the course of the day.

On Monday, the executive said it was taking urgent action to restore the medical card system, which has been down since last week due to a “technical issue”.

Patients’ representatives reported that GPs had been unable to register new medical cards or to check the validity of cards since last Wednesday due to the glitch.

The issue affected the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS)/National Medical Card Unit (NMCU) but the HSE did not provide further information on the nature of the glitch.

More than 1.8 million people in the State have medical cards and more than 400,000 have GP visit cards.

Anyone applying for a medical card in emergency circumstances may contact the HSE at cru.emergency@hse.ie or by phone at (01) 8647186.

The HSE said all applications received were monitored in order to identify priority cases for the grant of eligibility, without delay.