I am genuinely delighted to be here this morning to celebrate the official launch of this long awaited service, D-DOC. The establishment of D-DOC means that the people of North Dublin City and County now have easy access to a high quality and responsive out of hours GP service.
I have taken a great personal interest in the establishment and development of this service and I know that a huge amount of work and energy was put into this project, both by HSE staff and officials at the highest level and of course by the General Practitioners of this community. I am glad to take this opportunity to thank and commend you for your hard work in planning, negotiating and finally working to bring this service into existence.
Out of Hours services are, as we all know, a key element in the provision of a truly comprehensive health service. They play a crucial role in providing people with access to GP services or nurse advice outside of normal office hours, for urgent problems.
In the absence of these urgent out of hours service, people will either suffer on until morning, or decide to attend their local A+E department for treatment. While that is always an option, estimates suggest that up to 95% of people’s health and social services needs can be properly met within a primary care setting. When more urgent cases arrive into A+E, people with minor problems must wait to be seen. Thankfully, D-DOC is now able to offer people a massive improvement in their choices for care outside of normal hours.
The establishment of D-DOC provides not only a welcome alternative to long trips to an acute hospital, but also offers what I am assured from reports is a very efficient and effective urgent care service.
What I find really impressive are the added value elements in the D-DOC service and I know this was modelled on similar successful Out of Hours Services around the country. These include the single easy to remember lo-call number for the whole north Dublin area where callers can have their problem assessed immediately on the phone by trained staff. There is also a facility for callers to receive advice from a nurse on the phone, avoiding that person even having to leave their own home for care and advice.
Where a GP visit is needed, there are five treatment centres placed around the North City and County area, in Swords, North Strand, Coolock, Hartstown and of course here in Ballymun. Again, I am struck by the customer focus and the effort to ensure that those who are coming for treatment have a range of locations to suit them.
Finally, if a caller is medically unable to come to the treatment centre, D-Doc has fully equipped cars to allow a GP to make a home visit. This comprehensive service offers great reassurance to the half a million people who will be able to use this service.
I hope to have a chance to visit D-DOC’s call centre at some stage and see what I understand is a state of the art service for taking calls and providing the initial assessment of the caller’s condition.
I would like to commend HSE Chief Executive Brendan Drumm and his colleague Sean McGuire for their commitment to putting this service in place. I would like to congratulate Pat O’Dowd, Bernadette Kiberd and the large number of people from Primary Community & Continuing Care Division in the HSE for their tireless work in planning and designing the service.
I would also like to thank the General Practitioners of North Dublin who worked in partnership with HSE officials to bring D-DOC into operation.
It takes a lot of people working together to set up a complex service like this and a service which by definition operates at anti-social hours. Each person, from the GP, to the nurses and call staff, to security staff and D-DOC’s trained drivers, have an important role to play and all have a shared objective to provide care and choice to the people of the North city and county.
It has been a great pleasure to be with you this morning. I am delighted to see the quality of the service and the facility and I congratulate everyone involved in their achievement in bringing this service to life. I am very proud indeed to officially launch North Dublin’s first GP Out of Hours Service, D-DOC.
Thank You.
ENDS