Primary care needs €600m a year

AN EXTRA €600m each year must be invested in medical care outside of hospitals to make a real difference to the HSE, according to a public health expert.

Professor Anthony Staines, an academic in DCU’s Nursing and Human Sciences department, said the solution to overcrowding involves different areas of health, but making patient care better outside the hospitals will help.

Significant investment is needed to boost primary care, including extra funding for GPs, respite care, home helps, allied care including physiotherapists and occupational therapists. He said: ‘These can only be rough figures, an estimate would require a team of people working for months. I would estimate a €600m annual injection for a number of years to all aspects of primary care.

‘You could be talking about €200m to €300m for GPs and their own staff directly. Then €200m for more community-based staff shared across practices – these would be physios, midwives, mental health staff and the like. And €100m for home care packages and other social care staff.’

He said wider access to services outside of acute care would help lessen the bottleneck in our emergency departments.

Early intervention could prevent a chest infection becoming pneumonia so patients would avoid hospitalisation, Professor Staines added.

Better access to respite care or home help means patients can leave hospital the day they are medically well instead of remaining in hospital unnecessarily.

‘Most of the money would go into general practice directly to increase staff numbers and improve facilities for patients,’ Prof. Staines said. ‘This means things like on-site blood testing, access to midwives, physios, occupational therapy, psychologists and other therapists in the practice, and possibly some imaging such as ultrasounds.’