Temporary doctor ‘needed’ for GP services in Blarney

A CORK TD has called on the HSE to appoint a temporary doctor for Blarney pending the appointment of a permanent replacement GP.

It comes following the news that Ashdale Centre in Blarney is to lose its only GP at the end of December. Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould has said that the HSE has had “more than two months” notice of Dr Una O’Halloran’s departure from the medical centre and has waited until now to advertise.

In correspondence between Cork Kerry Community Healthcare (CKCH) and Deputy Gould, Head of Service of Primary Care Priscilla Lynch said that CKCH is “presently undertaking the appropriate steps in terms of: both contracting a permanent replacement and ensuring continuity of service in the interim for this GMS panel”.

“The HSE will communicate with GMS (General Medical Services) cardholders as soon as arrangements are finalised for the Interim GP Service which will commence on 1st January 2023 and will run during the timeframe taken to contract a permanent GP.

“Thereafter, as soon as a GP is contracted, further communication will issue to advise of the permanent arrangements,” the letter dated November 16 read.

Local TDs received phone calls on Tuesday from the HSE’s Michael Moriarty where he detailed that interim measures were agreed upon and that all patients would be notified by Friday in writing of those arrangements.

Speaking in the Dáil this week, Deputy Gould, who is calling on people to gather outside Ashdale Centre today at 1pm, said: “On September 28, Dr Una O’Halloran notified the HSE that she will be leaving her GP practice in Blarney. She notified the HSE she was leaving and here we are more than two months later and the HSE still has not advertised the post.

“Dr O’Halloran is finishing on December 31. The practice has almost 2,000 patients, between medical card holders and private patients, and it will mean the loss of a GP service in Blarney. Will the Taoiseach instruct the HSE to put a locum in place in the clinic?

“I know of a GP who has offered the HSE to take over that practice as a temporary measure until someone is appointed. At the moment we have the closure of a GP practice in Blarney, when somebody is willing to keep it going.”

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that his understanding is that the HSE “are endeavouring to get an interim GP in place” in Blarney.

“The HSE should sort this out, that’s their job,” he said, saying he will follow up on the issue with both the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and the HSE.