DESPITE INITIAL assurances from the Health Service Executive, Minister for Health James Reilly has now acknowledged that problems persist in the system used for processing medical card applications and renewals. And he stated last week that patients were the last people who should be “left in the lurch” as a result of these problems.
Unfortunately, there is no sign of a resolution of delays which have seen some applications go unacknowledged for up to a year. In too many instances, documentation has been reported to be lost or did not reached the right destination, according to applicants. For a person with a chronic disease, such delays may be life-threatening. One young woman with kidney failure who requires dialysis has described how, despite being financially entitled to free medical care and free drugs, she was unable to visit her GP in the six months during which her medical card application was pending. As a result of a failure to deal with her application she has been forced to pay for the medication for her chronic disease and has been unable to afford recommended preventive health interventions such as vaccinations.
At the end of last year, the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) proudly announced it had processed more than 300,000 applications and reviews since the processing of medical cards was fully centralised to a Dublin office in July and that it was responding to over 4,000 telephone, email and website inquiries daily. “Currently over 85 per cent of all complete applications are processed in 15 working days,” it said. However, this claim continues to be at odds with the experience of family doctors and patients.
Doctors have been providing pro bono care to people where possible but they cannot legally write prescriptions for free drugs in cases where medical cards are not being renewed. National director of the PCRS Paddy Burke has now apologised for the delays and said attempts to process medical cards within 15 days were being hampered by the high volume of applications being received and the large number of incorrectly filled-out forms submitted. As a former GP, Dr Reilly knows how the medical card system is the cornerstone of our public health service. He has seen at first hand how free primary care ensures a basic level of care is available to the poorest and most vulnerable. To preserve this crucial safety net, he must exercise his ministerial authority and instruct the PCRS to meet specific timelines for medical card renewal and approval.