Since 2009, GPs providing services to patients who have a medical card or a doctor only visit card have faced three cuts to fees and supports under FEMPI and reductions to fees to care for those over seventy. These cuts have had varying effects depending on the type of practice and the location of the practice. The IMO said that, in rural areas or for GPs with a high number of nursing home patients, the cuts were over 40 per cent. The Organisation, which commences its three-day AGM in Killarney today, underlined that the average cut across all GP services was 38 per cent.
In 2014, total GMS payments were €424,646,000 and cuts imposed to that date totalled €160 million, which equates to a 37.7 per cent cut, according to the IMO. “While since that date new services for under-sixes and diabetic patients have been introduced, this new funding does not negate the impact of FEMPI cuts as it was for new work not existing services,” outlined the Organisation. “These cuts were made under FEMPI and have never been restored, despite the restoration of FEMPI having been agreed with all public servants.”
The cumulative effects of these cuts, as highlighted by the IMO, are GPs being unable to take on new patients; patients having to wait for longer to be seen; practices closing down and communities being left without a GP; and no new practices establishing as younger GPs emigrate to systems that “support modern practice”.
Right after my 40th birthday I was informed by my family doctor after having some chest X-rays that I had mild emphysema. I had smoked for 20 years. I kept smoking and started getting sick about 7 months later. I ended up in intensive care for six days in septic shock from double pneumonia and almost died. The minute I start to walk around my breathing gets bad. Even the oxygen doesn’t seem to help. I want to feel good, and alive and energetic besides, I have a 2 years old grandson and I want to watch him grow up. My search for alternative treatments for treating my emphysema eventually led me to some amazing researcher/herbal doctor called Dr Linda(Best Health Herbal Centre) who had made unbelievable advancements in the use of alternative treatments to actually “Reverse” diseases. This same researcher/herbal doctor was providing her patients with herbal supplements that restored the immune system. I followed suit once again purchasing emphysema herbal supplement. After 6 weeks of relentlessly taking of the emphysema herbal supplements twice each day i completely recovered from emphysema! All my symptoms are gone and Remaining positive helped me during this treatment.
I see there are no comments yet to this diabolical development. A development that has been quietly eating away at a system that is already flawed. The ordinary person who has to hover at the breadline or just above is being targeted. I am ashamed to call myself Irish, when children leave for school in the morning only to return to a room at a hotel that they are supposed to call home. There is a solution,but, when it comes to money it is put away for the rainy day instead of helping all of our precious citizens now. I have 50 euro in my pocket today that is above and beyond what I need. I can give that to a GP if one child can be seen by a GP. My contact details are above. I will try and make another 50 euro available for another child as soon as I can. Love and best wishes J