Health

Tony O’Brien: GPs are the lynchpin of a workable health system

Community-based care is the only way forward for a healthy population in the future, so we urgently need to solve the crisis in general practice

While there is a legitimate need to address deficiencies in overall hospital capacity, the overall solution does not lie in an ever-expanding hospital system

The Department of Health’s analytical reports on waiting lists serve as a salutary reminder that our long-standing challenges with access to planned non-urgent, or elective, diagnostics and treatment is a growing problem.

This issue is not unique to Ireland. But we are doing comparatively badly on it when benchmarked against our international comparator countries.

Changes in our population size and age profile, as well as growing challenges around some lifestyle factors, mean that the need ...