Minister to ask department to examine role in GP fees

Doctors' charges: Minister for Health Mary Harney is to ask the Department of Enterprise and Employment to determine whether State agencies dealing with consumer protection have a role to play in relation to charges set by GPs for private patient consultations.

Ms Harney told the Dáil last week that she would ask Minister for Enterprise and Employment Micheál Martin to consider whether the Competition Authority or the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs has a part to play concerning GPs' private fees.

The Tánaiste's comments came in response to queries from Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte, who maintains that some GPs in Dublin recently increased charges for private consultations from €40 to €50.

The comments by Ms Harney marked a departure from the traditional departmental response to queries about private practice fees. In the past, the department simply stated that fee levels charged by GPs to private patients were a matter for the two parties and that the State did not have a role.

The first and only departmental survey of private patients, carried out in late 2003 and early 2004, found that on average GPs charged just under €36 for a consultation. At the time of the survey, just 12 patients surveyed said that they were charged in excess of €50.

In her previous role as minister for enterprise and employment Ms Harney strongly supported proposals to make GPs and dentists draw up price lists which patients could examine. However, this measure was shelved by her successor Mr Martin, following legal advice that the move could be unenforceable.

There were also concerns that GPs would not allow Government inspectors access to their practices to examine prices being charged.

Official files revealed that the Department of Enterprise and Employment believed that it had been "out-foxed" by the medical and dental professions which had submitted lengthy lists of procedures carried out in surgeries.

"The long list of services they were insisting on meant that we were running, in my view, a very real risk of increasing charges to the consumer. At present a GP charges €40/€45 for a visit. If you get him to look at your sprained ankle, check out your bronchitis and prescribe a cream for your acne, he will, in all likelihood still charge you the same.

"If each of these services is listed separately, the patient could end up paying €150 for the same visit," one Department of Enterprise and Employment official said at the time in a report to the Minister.

Departmental files revealed that the impetus for the price list proposal had come from Director of Consumer Affairs Carmel Foley who wrote to Ms Harney in late 2003 expressing concern at the variation in fees charged by doctors and dentists.

A spokeswoman for the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) said yesterday that the issue of the cost of a private consultation was a matter between the GP and the patient. She added that the IMO had no role to play in private practice fees.