New scheme will impose ‘significant’ cost

Professional competence (PC) will impose a significant administrative cost on the ICGP, College Chairman Dr John Delap has told Irish Medical Times.
“If you consider the issue of logging and auditing the competence assurance process for 3,500 doctors, then there is obviously going to be a significant administrative expense in dealing with that,” he said.

While the North Dublin GP accepted that this would require substantial investment by the College, he pointed out that the ICGP had always been “to the fore” in communicating with its members and in the recording of their CME activity. “So we would envisage that we would do the same for the competence assurance process,” he said.
The source of the funding is currently uncertain but the Department of Health and the Medical Council take the view that it is up to professional bodies like the ICGP to provide initial investment in the process. Dr Delap acknowledged the funding issue needed to be discussed. “The structure will have to be put in place, and it is going to have to be funded. The initial funding will be expensive, but once it is in place, it will very much run itself.”
The ICGP will have a “core role” in providing the educational background and structure for competence assurance within general practice and GPs will be the single biggest group of specialists under the Council, Dr Delap pointed out.
But there was also an outstanding issue for those on the general medical register.
“The Medical Council has asked people to indicate which college they would identify with. Many will identify with the ICGP, but for doctors who are not working in general practice, who are not specialists in any area, it is not clear how competence assurance is going to be provided for those doctors.
“We’ve made it clear that we would be prepared to provide our facilities to doctors who are not members of the ICGP, but who are working in general practice. But there is going to be a problem for the Medical Council regarding doctors who are not on any specialist register and have no home for their continuous training and competence assurance,” he added.