Dr. Conall Dennedy:

Could I follow up from what Dr. Durcan said about chronic care? I am an endocrinologist. We deal with diabetes, which requires a multidisciplinary care structure. We often hear of efforts to get people off diabetes waiting lists by referring them to the NTPF. If one tries to take someone off a diabetes waiting list and takes that person out of that multidisciplinary care setting, that person may be seen be a single consultant, the waiting list may be massaged, and he or she may be put on metformin or such. Individuals who are complicated patients may have been taken from a primary care situation and placed in that setting. Where do patients get their footcare and eyecare? What diabetes specialist nurse or advanced nurse practitioner can they ring up to adjust insulin should they be put on insulin? Those structures do not exist, for the most part, within private healthcare. Massaging a waiting list by taking somebody who requires that level of multidisciplinary care off the waiting list, by getting them a single visit to the NTPF, is not logical.