Professor Brian Lenehan:

The Senator is referring to GPs' access to blood tests. It is Monday to Friday access, which is standard throughout the country. It would require significant funding to provide access to out-of-hours GP services or weekend services. Our highest attendances are early in the week, on Monday and Tuesday. We see the numbers tail off on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We have lower attendance on Saturdays and Sundays. As one of the committee members referred to earlier, discharges tend to dip a little which can lead to something of a backlog. We are doing work on this to support patient flow over the seven days of the week so we do not get peaks and troughs. I hope to see this come to fruition in due course.