FIGURES BEING provided by the Health Service Executive (HSE) for the number of primary care teams which have been established across the country are most likely inaccurate, Minister for Health James Reilly has said.
In another attack on data provided by the executive, just a day after he rubbished their daily count for the numbers of patients on trolleys in hospital emergency departments which he said did not reflect reality, he told doctors attending the annual conference of the Irish College of General Practitioners in Galway on Saturday he didn’t believe there were more than 300 primary care teams in existence.
Latest figures on the HSE’s website indicate there were 355 primary care teams holding clinical team meetings at the end of February. Dr Reilly said: “If the HSE can prove to me, going through them one by one, that these truly exist, I’ll be most amazed.”
He told the conference when he heard talk “of hundreds of non-existent primary care teams I want to get serious and I want to get straight”. It was time to acknowledge the ones that were “real” and delivered excellent services to patients “but let’s stop trying to delude ourselves and others that the fact that GPs express an interest in becoming part of a team constitutes a team”.
Asked to elaborate later Dr Reilly said: “I and the HSE have had many conversations and we’ll be having many many more.” He added: “We’re going to have transparency. We’re going to have evidence-based information dictating policy to us . . . I just don’t accept that there are 356 primary care teams.”
Meanwhile, the Minister said he hoped to begin discussions with GPs and hospital consultants on new contracts soon. “I would hope to have a letter out to the IMO (Irish Medical Organisation) next week around negotiations for general practitioners. And I similarly hope to have a letter out to the IHCA (Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association),” he said.
Following much criticism from rural GPs in particular about the recent cut in the payment they get for doing out-of-hours house calls to medical card patients – the fee was cut from €93.24 to €45 – Dr Reilly said this would be looked at in the context of discussions on a new contract. “All these issues will be on the table . . . We want people treated as near to home as possible [and] you can’t get much nearer to home than in your home, so certainly we won’t be doing anything to undermine the ability of GPs to deliver that,” he said.
He said the Government’s plan to provide free GP care at the point of delivery to all within five years would be achieved “with difficulty but it’s going to be done”. The cost of this will be contingent on new contractual arrangements with doctors, he said, adding individuals will pay for it through their insurance policies.
“I’ll face down any interests that stand in the way of the plan that we put to the people and got a resounding mandate to implement . . . I don’t expect any group, any stakeholder to roll over and have their tummy tickled but they better be able to acknowledge that what the people have asked for the Government have been empowered to deliver and they don’t have a right to stand in the way of,” he continued.
IMO president Ronan Boland welcomed Dr Reilly’s intention to open discussions with GPs and consultants on a new contract.
Prof Frances Ruane, director of the ESRI, said a suite of contracts should be agreed for family doctors to take account of the different environments GPs are operating in.
Meanwhile, Dr Reilly said he had met “several world-leading clinicians and managers of paediatric hospitals” and would shortly appoint a team to review the decision to locate the new national children’s hospital at the Mater site.