At a meeting for Fermanagh and Omagh District Council held recently councillors expressed their frustration about GP Out of Hours Service.

Raising the matter Councillor Deehan stated that she felt correspondence from Western Urgent Care that outlined the difficulty it was in finding “enough GPs that were willing to work in the Out of Hours service”.

Councillor Deehan went on to say that she felt that this type of language created a misconception that GPs are not committed to the service:

“Many GPs would like to make a contribution to the GP Out of Hour Service but the demands of their in hours work is such that they are not finishing work until late in the evening and simply cannot take up additional work,” she stated.

The Independent councillor went on to say that the pressure of the work in GP out of hours makes it very difficult to sustain and that more investment is needed in GP primary care if the GP out of hours service was to be maintained to a high level.

Councillor Deehan proposed that the Council write to the Permanent Health Secretary Mr. Richard Pengally flagging up to him the significant pressure that GPs are under and ask him to make increased investment in primary care an investment.

Council Chairman, Howard Thornton noted that as a GP herself Councillor Deehan had not declared an interest but said that “was a matter for yourself”.

The motion passed with unanimous support.

UUP Councillor, Chris Smyth, quoted the letter sent to the Council from Western Urgent Care and said that he took exception to the idea that people were not medically disadvantaged when there was no doctor present at a local hospital for the out of hours service.

He proposed that following the up coming local elections the new Council meet with Western Urgent Care to discuss the matter further. The motion passed unanimously.

Councillor Fitzgerald of Sinn Fein said that the “letter was disappointing” and said that while the letter said it hoped that its contents reassured members that it was clear that it “offered no assurances to members”.

She said that a host of services in the health service had been overstretched and that this was causing a knock-on effect and that until this was rectified the “problem was being pushed up the road”.

Victor Warrington, UUP Councillor, stated that the knock-on effect of a lack of out of hours doctors was causing a severe strain on the emergency departments as patients were having to go there to be seen. He also added that the cost of locum doctors was highest in the west and that this was costing the service a lot of money.