Sir, – It cost €510 million more than budgeted to run the health service this year (13 times what the department budgeted to extend medical cards to children under six).
A large Dublin hospital is advising patients to stay away. Another is only able to see its diabetics for their annual check-up every 18 months.
Waiting lists locally for orthopaedics are in excess of two years.
Some of my patients have experienced puberty and come out the other side while on the ear, nose and throat (ENT) waiting list for outpatients.
Consultant posts lie empty and many rural areas are set to lose their family doctors for good. The HSE has stated it is not going to readvertise the GMS list in Feakle, Co Clare, which received no applications, so in other words there will probably never be another GP in Feakle.
Yet the Department of Health and the HSE are planning to extend free GP care to children under six, to primary schoolchildren, the over-70s, secondary schoolchildren and then to the rest of the public.
We are told we aspire to having a world-class health service based on the medical needs of patients rather than the ability to pay.
Like world peace, this is hard to argue with, and I hope the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar can succeed, but I worry about the fact that we don’t have enough doctors and that we cannot afford these reforms.
The existing system is already struggling and common sense would seem to suggest that it would be prudent to fix the health service we have before we continue to expand it.
I would like a world-class health system, but would settle for one that is safe and sustainable. – Yours, etc,
Dr SÉAMUS McMENAMIN,
An Uaimh,
Co na Mhí.