GPs fear lives at risk as HSE slashes out-of-hours funding

DOCTORS have warned patients’ lives will be at risk because of a plan by the Health Service Executive to slash funding to an out of hours GP service in the north east.

The North East Doctor on Call (NEDOC) service has been told that instead of an annual block grant it will receive a payment for every public patient treated from next year.

NEDOC, established 10 years ago, received €5m in funding from the health authority last year.

Operations manager Arlene Fitzsimons said the service was facing cuts of between 50% and 75% that would have dramatic effect on the level of service.

“We won’t be able to roster the same number of doctors, so people will have to wait longer to see a doctor and to get a call back from the service,” she said.

Kells GP Dr Peter Wahirab, one of the founders of the service, warned that lives would be put at risk because of the funding cut.

“The HSE has already curtailed hospital services in the region by concentrated acute services on just two sites and now this happens.

“There is a very definite risk to the thousands of patients we deal with, a real risk to life in my opinion,” he said.

Ms Fitzsimons said the grant covered the service’s rostering levels and the public patients who used it. Last year 87,000 patients contacted NEDOC and about half of the 47,000 seen by a GP were public patients.

North Dublin DDOC is the only other national GP co-op that receives a grant payment.

A spokesperson for the HSE said the country’s nine co-operatives had been notified of its intention to standardise the payment system.

A HSE spokesperson said a national review of the GP Out of Hours Service was completed in 2010 and it was planned to implement its recommendations from the beginning of 2011.

Killarney GP and SouthDoc medical director Dr Gary Stack said quality of care was ignored in the “very superficial and inaccurate” review.