Cost Of Family Health Care Revealed

Official figures just released have shown the huge cost of health care in NI.

Pharmaceutical payments alone topped £425million according to the Business Services Organisation, which has today published statistics about family practitioner services.

The data looked at services such as general medical, dental, ophthalmic and pharmaceutical services and follows the establishment of the Business Services Organisation on 1 April when it took over the functions of the Central Services Agency.

Among the key facts and figures for family practitioner services (to October 2008) is news that a total of 1,148 GPs, 819 dentists, 653 ophthalmic practitioners and 246 pharmacy contractors look after the population.

The figures also related there is 358 GP practices, 351 dental practices, 263 ophthalmic practices and 520 pharmacies located throughout Northern Ireland.

On average there were 65 GPs, 47 dentists, 37 optometrists and 30 pharmacies per 100,000 residents.

The gross cost per person for prescription drugs was £232 in 2007/08 while the total gross cost of pharmaceutical payment was £425.4million.

The average gross cost per prescription item was £13.78, an increase of 26% in over a decade from £10.90 in 1998.

There were 17.3 million prescription forms in 2007/08 for 30.9 million prescription items dispensed.

This equates to an average of 17 prescription items per person in 2007/08, an increase of 31% in just over a decade from 1998 when it was 13;

The average GP practice list size was 5,164 registered patients with the lowest average practice list size being in Fermanagh (3,386) and the highest was Carrickfergus (9,980). The average Dental Practice list size was 2,451.

There were 1.85million people registered with GPs in Northern Ireland.

The net cost of these general medical services - as paid by the Central Services Agency on behalf of Health Boards in 2007/08 - was £174million.

(BMcC/JM)