Talk about a misleading article , doctors do a fine job in this country and i have nothing against them personally ,they do provide a service unlike solicitors who create problems so they can profit,but you say they are at breaking point they would not know the first thing about it.

I think we’re gona need a breakdown of how much the state actually forks out for visits by medical card patients to take this in any seriousness.. its ?60 to visit my gp, I don’t think I’ve ever been with a gp for over 10/15 minutes. The availability of GP’s is far from the problem its the cost of them that’s unsustainable ..

well said , this coming from an org that signed off on a 20 million pension pot for its CEO. Yesterday the pharamacies was suggesting their members were bound for the soup kitchens becasue the government was denying them money from passport photos with the new licences, what next teachers paying too much tax on grinds ;-0

Brian. So true. We need a system where everyone has a medical card but EVERYONE pays €15 to use it. We need to level the playing field between the unemployed and the squeezed middle

agree 100% , I have nothing against anyone out of work and claiming free health care , I’m also in the middle class trap , spent over 200 euros over Christmas bringing my kids to the doctors , at present I probably need to go to the doctors but just can’t afford it , dreading if one of my kids needs to go back to the doctors before pay day. I have never seen a quite doctor’s surgery ever and they are struggling ? ,

Correct Gemma. A gp in France is about ?20 a visit. However I dont see the doctors as the whole problem. Doing business in Ireland is expensive & that needs to be addressed.

Don’t forget :

Among the highest paid social welfare in the world!

Highest paid GP’s in the world, that’s wrong for a start

Yep, some are paid over 800k a year by the HSE! Check this out (although it’s for 2010 but you can get the picture!): http://www.hse.ie/eng/staff/PCRS/PCRS_Publications/paymentstodoctors2010.pdf

Alicia

Please tell me who your doctor is. I want to sign up.

Please Alice, share,

I don’t know if I can say but I will anyway. Gp now in sandyford . They are at their capacity now and not taking on anymore new patients but afaik there is a waiting list. They have a practice in swords too but they are nearly fell too.

GP’s do absolutely nothing . Most don’t even have basic resus eqpt and haven’t a clue about it. All they can manage are a flu at best. All that they do is copy prescriptions of the consultants and refer patients like a traffic policeman !!
They don’t have the ability or eqpt to manage emergencies. We pay €60 for this !!!! No wonder the A/E are burdended .

em zulu, that’s kinda the point.

GP = non-emergency care, not a more comfortable place to get an x-ray and certainly not the place to get resuscitated. If you’re sick or sore, but functional, you go to the GP. If you broke your leg, inhaled smoke, or are having a heart attack, you go to Accident and Emergency.

If you need a referral, you go the GP and they refer you up the chain. They are primary care. When you’ve been discharged from hospital, you go to your GP to get your prescription topped up afterwards. This stops hospitals from being clogged up with sick people that don’t need to be there, and keeps old biddies with a cold out of A&E.

If you want to talk about the cost, that’s fine. But the primary care model is best from a care perspective, as long as the doctors involved aren’t complacent in their diagnosis. It might seem like a racket for writing anti-biotic prescriptions, but they are there for the 1 in 1000 patients where something serious is actually going on.

Disgrace? Nowhere in the world can GPs take blood tests and have the result the same say,… They’d need a lab on site for that. How much would it cost to see a GP then if they had to stay profitable while paying for a lab and lab tech? Same goes for the scans, although in actual fact alot of the new generation of GPs are coming through with qualifications in ultrasound, etc that aren’t part of the traditional job description. Certainly not like 200 years ago. The job of a GP is primarily disease prevention and management of chronic stable illness. Acutely ill patients need to go to the emergency department. If someone knows that they are ill to the point that they need blood test results within a few hours then, they should also realise that to the GP isn’t where they should go. Not a perfect system but that’s life.

Spot on Ronan. ALL GPs have resus equipment. By law. All GPs have spent months working as SHOs in the ED during their training. Some people misinterpret what the role of GP is.

Also, the bill to pay a GP is high, yes. Sometimes up to 60 euro. You don’t hear people complaining that women have to pay over 100 euro to get a haircut! The cost to see a GP pays for the doc, nurse and receptionists wages, not to mention utilities bills. GP practises are businesses and as such have to remain viable

You see Alan most people are thick and ignorant when it comes to any position. Everyone is an expert at everything these day – Everyone is a doctor, economist etc. .

They should leave their opinions elsewhere

It’s all about balance, a gp gets around 100e a year for a medical card patient regardless of how many times they go. So a lot of oap go once a week so it’s 2e a visit.

I think they get a lot more than that. The figures are in the public domain. Somewhere.

Did you sweat for 2 years studying for your leaving cert and then spend 12 years training for your job? There are few professions which involve that amount of learning. The majority of cases might be simple, but it’d hardly be fair to charge people on the basis of how sick they are, now wouldn’t it?

GPs live in your community, pay rent light and heat, pay staff, and have big business loans from when they bought the goodwill in a practice after qualifying. They don’t walk out the door with a ball of 50s in their pocket.

Sure, a GP of 40-50 is well paid and comfortable, but they put off a lot of comfort (and their lives) early on so that they can complete the 1/5 of their adult working lives they spend training, followed by another 1/5 paying for the chunk of the practice they bought into.

Tell me why someone would invest so much time money and effort, just to work for 50K per year? They wouldn’t. And then there would be no doctors, or at least plenty of bad ones, because it would be a daft career choice filled with mediocre performers.

Ronan, 7 years study subsidised by the tax payer, but fair play , it can’t be easy , but it’s not right to charge 50€ plus for this service to be referred on to the specialist, or to charge 10€ for a doctors note for people on long term sick,