No doctors sign up for first primary care unit in Millennium Centre

GP’S SAY THAT THEY COULD NOT SIGN TO SCHEME THAT EXCLUDES 60% OF PATIENTS November 2006

No local GPs have signed up to Dundalk’s first primary care unit (PCU) which will open in the renovated rail shed in the millennium centre off St. Alphonsus Road, which is due to open next year.

The unit is intended to be the first of three provided in Dundalk to meet the stated government intention of providing local services in the community to allow for easier access for patients and reduced waiting times, together with reducing demands on hospitals and A&E departments.

The concept is based around GPs signing up and taking their patient lists with them to the primary care units, where all patients’ medical needs could be attended to under one roof.

When the proposal is revealed, some doctors express an interest in becoming involved, but because of a delay in getting the concept off the ground, local GPs who have put off investing in new surgery facilities, cannot afford to delay any longer.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) claims there will be no GP involvement in the PCU, other than the GPs will refer medical card patients to the unit for the variety of services, such as nurses, oc- cupational therapists, dieticians, social workers, family and home care who will work from the unit.

This is not the impression doctors from all over Louth took away from a meeting with the HSE last month.

The crux seemed to be that the PCUs would only be for medical card holders; and that any GPs signing up to transfer patient lists to the unit would do so on the basis that the new facilities could not be used by private patients of the GP.

Doctors say they cannot get involved under current terms, which exclude upwards of 60% of the population who are private patients.

The health centre will be a stone shed, in which a locomotive was once built and repairs carried out to steam engines.

It has been renovated at a cost of €2,595,000, and stands on a 0.3471 hectare site, the land and building acquired in 1995 by Dundalk urban council as part of a package that saw the council purchase the old Barrack Street goods depot from CIE in part exchange for land on the Ardee Road for a new depot.

The land accommodates the new county council offices, swimming pool and decentralised government offices, but in the corner remained the derelict stone shed.

The new facility will open in April/ May of 2007.