Medical card move could spark industrial action

HEALTH union IMPACT has voted to embark on industrial action if necessary to oppose the HSE’s attempts to centralise medical card processing.

An emergency motion was passed at the union’s national health conference in Castlebar yesterday. Staff working at medical card offices throughout the country have been instructed by the union not to co-operate with attempts to centralise the service.

IMPACT national secretary Kevin Callinan told delegates: “The HSE is taking a service that is locally based, in 32 offices across the country, and dumping it just off the M50 in Dublin. The new system removes the opportunity for quality input from experts such as general practitioners, public health nurses and community welfare officers. Personal contact is lost.

“The citizen that can travel to their local health office will not travel to Dublin even if that option was available. People who are vulnerable or anxious, who may need assistance or guidance on eligibility or how to complete forms, cannot be catered to under this new system. It is a public service that is best rooted in the local community, where local knowledge and expertise defines it,” he said.

Mr Callinan said since the start of this year, because of the Government’s withdrawal of automatic entitlement for people over 70, the new medical card applications process was centralised to the Primary Care Reimbursement Service, where the HSE proposed to transfer the entire medical card processing operation.

He said that the move has been “disastrous”.

“The service has received numerous complaints from applicants about mistakes, delays and poor responses. For example, a 91-year-old woman, who was entitled to a medical card, returned her card because of the threat of legal consequences on the application form, despite qualifying within the guidelines. Numerous cards have been cancelled and listed as ‘deceased’, even though the cardholders are still very much alive.”

Mr Callinan claimed the problems that arose were inevitable, because there were no resources allocated to the transfer of services.

“Very recently, two IMPACT officials made a visit to the PCRS building, and saw for themselves the extent of the chaos. Just two receptionists were fielding a succession of phone calls about the over-70s scheme, which, by the way, accounts for less than 10% of all medical card processing. If the remaining medical card processing is moved over to PCRS it will cause a meltdown.”