Independent Ireland candidate for Galway West, Noel Thomas, has said that the group will give medical cards to all cancer patients and abolish the means test for carers.
The commitments form part of an extensive overhaul of healthcare by the group that also includes interest free loans for medical students and increased investment in regional hospitals.
“Ireland’s healthcare system is increasingly unable to meet demand and Irish citizens frequently wait months or years for necessary procedures,” Cllr Thomas said.
“Hospital beds are chronically in short supply and primary care staff are overwhelmed by their workload. The bottom line is we need more doctors, nurses and hospitals. This means we need more funding and competent management of the HSE to ensure that funding is well spent.
"We recognise the problem and we propose to increase salaries of primary care doctors and nurses to ensure they remain in Ireland, provide forgivable, interest-free loans for Irish students to study medicine with an attached agreement that they practice in Ireland for seven years and we will increase the number of medicines a pharmacist can prescribe to reduce demand on doctors,” he said. On the issue of access to services, Independent Ireland has committed to a 24/7 access model," he added.
“We already know this is possible because private hospitals operate on this system,” Noel Thomas said. “We will increase funding to smaller, regional hospitals that can provide urgent and routine care to people who do not reside in large cities, which is 45% of the population, and this will alleviate pressure on large hospitals in urban centres.”
Further significant commitments are that the group will abolish means testing for carers, automatically issue medical cards to patients undergoing cancer treatment for the duration of their treatment and introduce outpatient mental health respite facilities to address the gap between acute admission and community care. “What is crucial to this is that we make the Minister for Health directly answerable for the delivery of services. Successive Ministers have hidden behind the HSE for years and this can no longer be the case if we are to ensure transparent and effective healthcare for all,” he concluded.
