Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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Question 351: To ask the Minister for Health and Children his views on general practitioners attending patients at their home (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10248/11]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Under the General Medical Services (GMS) Scheme contract, general practitioners (GPs) are obliged to provide services in their practice premises or by way of domiciliary visits, as appropriate, for their medical card and GP visit card patients, for 40 hours each week. They must also make arrangements to enable contact to be made with them, or a locum/deputy, for emergencies outside of these hours.

GP out-of-hours co-operatives are now in place in all HSE areas, providing coverage in all or in part of all counties. The total annual cost of funding GP out-of-hours services is some €110 million. In 2010 the HSE provided over €8 million in funding to SouthDoc to provide GP out of hours services in Counties Cork and Kerry.

Persons who contact GP out-of-hours co-operatives are prioritised as either emergency, urgent or routine. In emergency cases a triage nurse will generally arrange for the dispatch of an ambulance and/or duty doctor. For non-emergency calls a triage nurse carries out a structured assessment by telephone of the patient's symptoms. The nurse may provide advice over the phone, make an appointment for the patient to be seen by the duty doctor at a treatment centre or, if necessary, a home visit may be arranged.

The total payments to GPs under the GMS Scheme in 2009 was over €472 million. The decision to remove the "distance from the GP's surgery" as a payment criterion for the GMS GP Contract was taken in 2010 under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) Act 2009. This decision has to be seen in the light of the country's current financial circumstances and the fact that salaried health staff have all had pay cuts in recent years.