“The number of children seen free of charge more than doubled to 10,824 during the year after the policy change”.

. The study published in the annals of family medicine by Dr Mike Callaghan and his colleagues (Department of Public Health and primary care, Trinity College Dublin) has found that offering free childhood general practice services led to a dramatic increase in visits. There was a25% increase in daytime and out of hours visits. The article says that the increase has implications for future healthcare service planning and mixed public and private funded systems.

The study focused on an eight daytime general practice services in the local out of hours services – Northdoc and on a detailed study of the patient use of the Northdoc out of hours service –D Doc.

Northdoc offers urgent general practice services out of hours to the population of North Dublin (pop 550 K). The service covers over 140 practices (250 GPs).

The study showed that 9,898 children aged under six made approximately 15,000 visits the general practice out of hour’s service in the period before the policy change, and 11,890 children made 8958 visits in the period after. This difference the case to a 20.1% more children seen at least once and 25.7% more visits in the latter.

The number of children seen free of charge more than doubled to 10,824 during the year after the policy change.

Dr Mel Bates, Medical Director of Northdoc said “I want to congratulate Dr O’Callaghan and his colleagues for this essential piece of work. The Government and the department of health need to look closely at this report. General practice, both in and out of hours simply cannot continue to expand to meet demand without more GPs in the community and proper funding. ”

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