Primary Care Centres across Donegal have cut back on a wide number of services in a bid to make staff available for frontline Covid-19 response services.
Only critical and vital services will continue to be provided at community GP surgeries and health centres during the pandemic.
The revision of services, as announced by the HSE, defines critical and vital services to include GP services, Public Health Nursing and Community Pharmacy services; emergency aids and appliance provision; essential immunisation services; emergency Dental and Ophthalmic services; and any service that is required to respond to a service user being at high risk.
Primary Care Services are all of the health or social care services that you can find in your community, outside of the acute hospital.
All desired services at the centres will be curtailed and/or cancelled until such time that they can be resumed, the HSE has said.
Chief Officer of the CHO 1 area Mr John Hayes stated “We would like to thank members of the public for their co-operation thus far. We appreciate that the revision of our Primary Care Services impacts directly on service users and we would ask that you continue to work with us in the interests of patient and staff safety to ensure that we manage this as effectively as possible.”
For further information in relation to your Primary Care Service, please contact your service provider. In relation to cancellation of appointments, your service provider will communicate this with you. If you are feeling unwell and have a scheduled appointment, please contact your service provider prior to your appointment.
Anyone with general concerns should firstly visit HSE.ie/coronavirus. If you still have concerns, you can ring HSELive on 1850 24 1850. HSELive is an information line only and can’t order coronavirus tests.
Anyone with symptoms should not show up at their GP/ GP Out of Hours Service or ED unannounced.
