Minister for Health James Reilly has called for improvements to be made to the system used for issuing and renewing medical cards after reports of long delays for patients.
Dr Reilly said patients were the last people who should be "left in the lurch" as a result of problems in the system used for processing medical card applications.
His comments came after the head of the HSE's Primary Care Reimbursement Service today apologised for the delays, which have left some patients unable to obtain medication. The backlog follows the centralisation of the processing of medical cards, from more than 100 offices around the State to one central office in Dublin in July 2011.
The Dáil Public Accounts Committee was told yesterday that some patients were waiting up to nine months to receive their medical cards, with terminally ill patients among those affected by the delays.
More than 100 GPs in the North East withdrew from primary care teams last month in protest at the delays.
The Department of Health had previously denied any delay in processing medical cards. Last month it claimed that centralised process for medical card applications and renewals meant in excess of 80 per cent of completed applications were processed within 15 working days.
National director of the primary care reimbursement Service Paddy Burke said attempts to process medical cards within 15 days were being hampered by the high volume of applications being received and a large number of incorrectly filled out forms submitted.
Speaking on RTÉ radio earlier today, Mr Burke said increased unemployment was leading to a rise in applications for medical cards with over 90,000 new applications received last year. He promised improved communication with medical card holders and better renewal procedures to ease the delays.
"I accept that there's a difficulty with the process and apologise to anyone who hasn't got the service they should expect to get. (There has been) a very significant system change. We have centralised medical card processing in one office since July and since then we have issued more than half a million cards," he said.
Mr Burke said that up to 35 per cent of applications received were incorrectly filled out which he claimed had added to the delays being experienced.
He admitted that the application system needed to be simplified in order to cut down on the number of errors and said that steps were being taken to resolve this.
Mr Burke said some 4,000 applications are currently being processed daily and that it was hoped the backlog would be cleared over the coming weeks.
