State set to write off part of €9m wrongly paid to GPs

THE State is preparing to write off a substantial portion of the €9 million owed to it by GPs, but it remains to be seen if they will repay the reduced amount.

Almost 2,000 doctors were wrongly paid €9m for treating “ghost” medical card holders - people who had either died or moved to another health board area.

The doctors’ representative body, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), has resisted State attempts to recoup the overpayments, saying its members were underpaid for years for treating other medical card patients.

Given the “strong possibility” of a legal challenge, the Department of Health had agreed to examine the alleged underpayments, secretary-general Michael Scanlan told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee yesterday.

Rather than compensate the doctors for those underpayments, it looks likely the State will instead write off a significant percentage of the €9m the GPs owe it.

The department received a draft report in March which had identified potential underpayments to doctors of €1.8m in three principal categories, the committee heard. Underpayments in a number of other categories have yet to be confirmed. But Mr Scanlan said an estimate had been made, and was being independently verified. He said the process was due to be completed in the next two to three weeks.

IMO chairman Dr Martin Daly said they were anxious to meet with Mr Scanlan to hear the details. But the IMO, he stressed, would demand a “full audit” of the medical card payments system “before we would concede anything”. Doctors, he said, felt they had been made “scapegoats” for an inefficient system.