Based in Killarney the South-Doc service - which provides medical cover for the South Kerry and West Cork region - commenced in October of last year.

It has also emerged that it cost in excess of €2million to keep the service running in its first year.

In terms of man hours and call-outs, weekends have been particularly hectic over the past 12 months and the SouthDoc service operates for a full 63 hours, from 1am on Saturday until 8am on Monday.

Doctors on rota in SouthDoc are not currently paid by the Department of Health and the 2million involved is used exclusively to keep the call centre running efficiently and to pay the 100-plus SouthDoc staff

And, according to SouthDoc officials, these costs are likely to increase when the Department of Health and GPs finish their ongoing pay negotiations.

The culmination of hard work and planning by a number of top medical figures around South Kerry, the main brains behind the SouthDoc scheme were Dr Donal Coffey and Dr Gary Stack both of whom work out of practices in the Killarney area.

Dr Stack said that the team was delighted with the success of the inaugural year of South-Doc.

Anew initiative, they were surprised by how quickly people in Kerry familiarised themselves with what and what not the service could cater for.

"The public has learned how to deal with SouthDoc very quick-ly and nearly all the calls are appropriate for the service," Dr Stack told The Kingdom.

"We are an out-of-hours GP service and not an emergency service people realise that and have really been very responsible in dealing with the service," he added.

But it was not only the public that needed to be educated on a different way of dealing with out-of-hours medical needs.

Dr Stack has nothing but raise for the staff who developed SouthDoc from the drawing board to reality.

"They worked extremely hard," he said.

"It was new for everybody and no one had experience of anything similar before we started," Dr Stack remarked.

"It was a learning curve but they all dealt really well with it," he added.

In total, there are now 150 doctors and 100 staff working in the SouthDoc Co-operative.

The majority of the GPs work part-time outside their practice hours but fully trained agency doctors have also been drafted in for what is called "the red eye shift" for half the week.

In many cases these are doctors from outside the locality, often Australia and New Zealand natives, but Dr Stack stressed that all are fully trained and have local drivers to get them out and about to tend to patients.

And with extra doctors drafted in, local GPs have been benefiting from extra free time on their hands which, for some, is an experience they have not had since they started work in the medical profession.

"There was at least one doctor who couldn t take his wife away for the weekend, who couldn t take his kids to the beach or to a match because there was no rota he was always on duty," Dr Stack revealed.

"But now out-of-hours work is more organised with better backup.

It is a real change from the time when the only back-up a doctor had would be from their husband or wife," the Killarney GP added.

According to Dr Stack, South-Doc has also rovided increased security, particularly for female doctors who now have a trained driver with them at all times.

But the Killarney GP claims that it is the patients that have benefited most over the last 12 months.

A sample survey was carried out throughout the year and the results are very positive.

"The feedback was a 95 to 98 per cent satisfaction rate I don t think you will find any other service that would get that kind of a response from its clients," Dr Stack suggested.

He admitted that there have been "a few complaints" but added that there is a procedure to deal with anyone who does not believe the service is up to scratch.

"Complaints are being handled by the patients own GPs as well they can liase directly with the patients without compromising confidentiality and they will be more aware of any background," the Killarney doctor revealed.

"It seems to work well," he added.

Dr Stack was also delighted with the performance of the scheme during the intensive tourism season and the service coped well with the influx of visitors and the associated increase of out-of-hours calls.

But having made it successful-ly through its first year, there are still challenges ahead for South-Doc, he stressed.

West Kerry is expected to come on board in the SouthDoc scheme before the end of this year and Cork outside of parts of West Cork already included is still awaiting vital funding from the Department of Health which would allow the area to sign up to the scheme.

The inclusion of Cork in SouthDoc would see the number of doctors working within the scheme quadruple, as well as a huge increase in calls coming through the Killarney centre which is the headquarters for the entire scheme.

It would necessitate an increase in staff numbers in the town but Dr Stack is confident that, with hard work and planning, the arrival of both West Kerry and Cork would cause a minimum of problems.

 

<-- Go Back