Private charges: It is inappropriate for private chiropodists who are engaged to treat patients on behalf of the Health Service Executive to charge patients a top-up fee, Minister for Health Mary Harney has said. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
Her comments follow complaints from a number of patients who were told by the HSE they were entitled to free chiropody services. However, when they attended they were charged fees above what the chiropodists were paid by the State to treat them.
Age Action Ireland said it had received a number of such complaints. However, one of the four organisations representing chiropodists said yesterday the fees provided by the HSE were so "meagre" chiropodists had to charge top-up fees.
Pat Mortell of the Irish Chiropodists/Podiatrists Organisation said chiropodists were paid €20.20 for treating an eligible patient who visited them at their practice and €30.41 for travelling to treat patients in their own homes.
The fee for a three-hour session in a nursing home is €83.14, with an extra €3.68 for each dressing used. He said many private chiropodists had stopped providing services for the HSE because the fees were so low.
Ms Harney, in a written reply to a parliamentary question, said there was no statutory obligation on the HSE to provide chiropody services to medical card patients. However, she said that in several regions the service was provided by private chiropodists in arrangement with the HSE.
"I consider that it is inappropriate for private chiropodists who are providing services on behalf of the HSE to charge patients a top-up fee, and I have conveyed this view formally to the HSE. My Department requested the HSE to initiate a review of the fee arrangements in place for the provision of chiropody services, with a view to ensuring that such additional fees will no longer be levied on persons in receipt of this service," she said.