Patients face delay in row over sample transport

PATIENTS in the mid-west face long journeys and hospital delays for routine medical checks normally carried out by GPs.

It follows a row over the transport of samples and swabs to laboratories.

Many local doctors bring blood, urine and sputum samples to laboratories.

But they have warned the Health Service Executive (HSE) they will stop this practice as it goes against a new EU directive on the transport of medical samples.

More than 180 doctors in Limerick, Clare and North Tipperary have given the HSE until September to come up with proposals for the collection of samples to comply with EU directive 3373.

Limerick-based GP Dr Mary Gray told the Irish Medical Times that doctors had been in talks with the former Mid-Western Health Board for three years to put in place a system for the collection and transportation of samples from GP clinics to hospital laboratories.

The GPs, she said, had lost patience.

She said a meeting of GPs was planned for September to review the situation, and, depending upon the response they received from the HSE Mid-West, a decision could be taken to cease blood and other testing in GP clinics.

This would mean patients requiring routine procedures, such as having bloods taken, would have to go to hospital, Dr Gray said.

She warned: “Hospitals will not be able to cope.”

Dr Gray said EU compliant collection systems had been put in place in other parts of the country.

She said: “The HSE Mid-West may not have prioritised it. We heard they had got quotations for a service, but this was for the transport of samples between hospitals, and not from GPs.”

She said they wanted a collection system whereby GPs could organise the taking of routine samples on certain days of the week when they would have a collection service to get samples to laboratories.

A spokesperson for the HSE Mid-Western Area last night confirmed that the only collection service from GP practices was in the Roscrea and Thurles areas of Tipperary North.

Dr Gray said some GPs are putting the samples into their cars and driving for 45 minutes just to bring them to laboratories, or getting the patients to deliver them in person.

The alternative was to send them by post, which was unsatisfactory for the transportation of such materials, or to use a courier, which cost €7 per item, she said.