Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 28 September 2016

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare

Management of Chronic Care Illness: Discussion

9:00 am

Dr. Brendan O'Shea:

To summarise, we do not have access to diagnostics. This is the cause of the bloated waiting lists in the hospitals. I cannot get an MRI scan for a patient. If I refer a patient to an orthopaedic unit, it might be possible. We have got 500,000 people on a waiting list. Once upon a time, it might have been too expensive to get MRIs or CT scans. They used to cost €500 or €600 but they now cost €200. These diagnostic tools need to be made available to us at primary care level. They need to be made available for our patients.