Family clinic cancels services for card holders
The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) yesterday announced the suspension of its services for all medical card holders at its main clinic in Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin. The association blamed the cutbacks on a lack of funding available from the Northern Area Health Board (NAHB).
It is understood that the IFPA used up its annual grant from the NAHB by mid-September due to an upsurge in the number of medical card holders using its services. "Already this year, we have provided almost 4,000 appointments to medical card clients from our city centre clinic," said IFPA chief executive Catherine Heaney.
She warned that the cutback in services could have serious consequences for patients through an increase in crisis pregnancies as well as delays in patients availing of smear-testing and breast-screening services.
Ms Heaney expressed concern about having to turn away medical card holders. A large proportion of clients were young people who might be anxious not to attend their local GP for reasons of anonymity.
A recent survey showed that over 56% of those attending the clinic were between 18 and 25 the group most at risk of crisis pregnancy or contracting a sexually transmitted infection, said Ms Heaney.
Ms Heaney said the IFPA was informed last Friday that no further funding would be available from the NAHB for the remainder of 2003.
She said the clinic was reluctantly not in a position to provide continuing services to medical card patients as they had already been heavily discounted.
For example, the IFPA charged health boards just 150 for performing a vasectomy on medical card holders, compared to the standard 320 charge for fee-paying patients.
Ms Heaney said the lack of funding for the remainder of the year was worrying as the Christmas season was one of the busiest periods for IFPA services.
A spokesperson for the NAHB said it had a commitment to extend family planning services to medical card holders.
He pointed out that the NAHB had increased the annual grant to the IFPA from €20,000 in 2000 to €154,000 in the current year.
The spokesperson said the board had informed the IFPA early this year that it would be unable to provide any increase on this figure. However, the board would seek to expand existing services in 2004.
