‘Patients in need not losing out’
Repeated cases have emerged of the help not being renewed, despite patients’ medical and financial needs not changing.
Mr Reilly, however, said the vast majority of people who had the cards two years ago still retain them.
Dr Reilly told the Oireachtas Health Committee that 39% of the 97,121 he said were held in Mar 2011 have been retained.
A further 43% have been replaced with full medical cards as the individuals involved now fall below the income threshold, while 18% of the discretionary cards no longer exist.
Of this latter category, Dr Reilly said 14% of this group involve people who have since died and 37% who were deemed to now be ineligible. Another 37% were taken away after the holder did not return HSE correspondence, while 12% of the cases involved people who initially appealed the decision but for various reasons did not continue the request.
Dr Reilly said the figures prove he is right to “reject out of hand” suggestions the discretionary medical card policy has changed.
However, the percentages also raise questions over why thousands of discretionary cards were not renewed, with no clear explanation as to why some cards are now ineligible, why exhaustive appeals ended, and why almost a third of individuals did not respond.
HSE director general Tony O Brien told the committee the HSE is facing an extremely difficult year financially and confirmed its deficit at the end of July was €75m — a figure which is believed to have since increased substantially.
Independent senator and co-founder of the Jack and Jill Foundation, Mary Ann O’Brien, said the issue raises further concern over the potential impact on emergency discretionary medical cards for terminally-ill patients. “We had a case two weeks ago of a baby born in the Coombe, who was transferred to Crumlin,” she said. “It took a week to get that child a medical card, and, in fact, Crumlin and the Jack and Jill Foundation had to pay for the supply of equipment to feed the child, to get the child home so the child could die at home.” Dr Reilly raised concern after hearing of the case and said despite budget pressure this type of incident must not happen. However, the senator replied: “We have two realities here.”
