Concern over medical card processing delays

FRUSTRATION is growing among Clare general practitioners and elderly patients in the county over the long delays in processing medical card applications for the over 70s.

A North Clare general practitioner has claimed that it is disgraceful that people who are in most need of free medical care are effectively being abandoned because of major difficulty accessing the new Health Service Executive (HSE) Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) in Dublin.
Irish Medical Organisation spokesman, Dr Michael Kelleher has also alleged that the “chaotic” transition to the new system, which is supposed to lead to a streamlining of the service, is actually contributing to the denial of badly-needed medical cards.
Dr Kelleher told The Clare Champion that the new system is causing huge problems for elderly patients, particularly those who have literacy difficulties in filling forms or technical issues dealing with information technology and touchtone phones. He claimed that some elderly people had ran out of phone credit after spending between 30 and 40 minutes waiting for someone in the central office to answer the phone.
He said that general practitioners don’t have the time or the resources to allow staff to spend long periods chasing down processing issues in Dublin. Under the old system, he said that doctors or their staff were able to ring someone they knew in the local office, who knew the history of the majority of their clients, which resulted in a much more efficient service.
“The new service, which is supposed to be more streamlined, is not working. The new online service is of no use to elderly people who don’t know how to use information technology.
“The central number doesn’t seem to be working when people try to get through to the national office. Local lists are not corresponding with national ones and this is leading to even more confusion.
“It is taking far too long to process cards at national level. It should take a few days and it is taking several weeks. Elderly people who are frail and least able to fend for themselves are falling through the net and experiencing very lengthy delays.
“We need the personal touch and knowledge provided by the local office. The whole issue is very frustrating for GPs throughout the country and patients,” he said.
The delay being experienced by elderly patients in the Mid-West was criticised by members of the HSE West Forum meeting on Tuesday.
The head of the PCRS, Paddy Burke, said at the meeting that there were some teething problems when the new service was introduced because of a difficulty with phones but pledged the backlog would be addressed by the end of April.
Mr Burke said the PCRS is working with Age Action Ireland, GPs and other interested parties to address any concerns and difficulties with the new system. Stating that serious backlogs of unprocessed applications have been discovered in local offices, he stressed the benefits of centralisation, included a reduction in the waiting time from 16 weeks down to 15 days.
Estimating that centralisation has resulted in savings of over €5 million to date, he pointed out that all new applications would be assessed using a uniform and consistent process, providing more appropriate expenditure of taxpayers’ funding.
He claimed that local health offices are not providing the public with information and are redirecting them to the national office, which resulted in on average more than 4,000 phone calls, meaning the phones lines are busy almost all of the time.