Waiting times for patient referrals to consultants are expected to improve following the establishment of the country's first national electronic GP referral system.
The new system, which is a joint collaboration between the National Cancer Control Programme (NCCP) and the Irish College of General Practitioners, allows GPs to refer their patients to consultants electronically to ensure faster referrals.
The first stage of the system is already in operation with over 4,000 patients referred into breast, lung and prostate rapid access services in the country's eight designated cancer centres last year. This is equivalent to about 10 per cent of all such referrals.
The new system has the capacity to deal with over 42,000 referrals into breast, lung and prostate services a year.
The NNCP has set a target of having 20 per cent of all breast, prostate and lung referrals made electronically by the end of 2012.
It is hoped the system will also prevent a repeat of the controversy at Tallaght hospital in 2010 when it was discovered that more than 3,400 GP patient referral letters, dating back to 2002, had not been processed.
The system enables any of the country's 2,800 GPs to send a referral electronically to cancer clinics, and receive a reply within five days with patient appointments confirmed within two weeks.
An audit carried out by the Health and Information Quality Authority (Hiqa) in the wake of the Tallaght hospital disclosure found huge variations in the way patients are referred to health services.
Speaking at the official launch of the system today, Minister for Health James Reilly said it would allow for earlier diagnosis of cancer in patients and therefore a greater opportunity to treat cases.
Dr Reilly admitted the system was something of a "no brainer", and said he wanted to see it rolled out across the health service.
"I want to see this transposed across the entire system so that all referrals in the future will be electronic, that patients will have certainty about their date and the record of their request so that never again will we see a situation like occurred in Tallaght," he said.
