Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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Question 459: To ask the Minister for Health if he will ensure that personnel within the new centralised medical card section will respond to phone calls within the time frame agreed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28257/11]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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The Health Service Executive's (HSE) Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) is managing the Medical Card centralisation project. The Medical Card centralisation programme has been introduced on a phased basis, and has moved ahead throughout 2010 and 2011 to date, as planned. Significant progress has been made on this national project in providing an improved service to the public at less cost to the State.

As part of its service the central office has provided a dedicated phone service to deal with queries. is service has a 48-hour response time to all queries. The PCRS has informed me that this time-frame is being adhered to by the service. The call triage telephone system provides customer focused information and call routing, as well as other services to support clients who have enquiries about medical cards or their application or reviews. A comprehensive support system to deal with queries from the public also provides phone, text and email support to queries on a daily basis. At the moment the central office handles, on average, 2,229 telephone calls per day.