FEES and allowances paid to doctors, pharmacists and dentists last year by the General Medical Services Payment Board increased by £27 million over 1994 figures to almost £304 million.
Figures from the board also show that family doctors were paid £92 million in fees and allowances, pharmacists were paid £199 million and dentists received £6 million.
A statement from the board says that the increase in the cost of drugs and medicines is explained in part by an increase of almost one million in the number of items prescribed and dispensed under the GMS scheme and 350,000 additional claims under the Drug Cost Subsidisation Scheme.
In the year under review, the board processed more than 22 million claims and paid a total of £67 million in fees and £25 million in allowances to family doctors.
Pharmacies were paid dispensing fees totalling £46 million and also paid £153 million for the drugs and medicines.
Dentists were paid more than £6 million, in this the first full year of the dental treatment services scheme.
The report says that 1,277,055 people were eligible and registered under the GMS scheme, 35.76 per cent of the population of the State.
The board paid for 90,000 eligible persons who received dental treatment under the Dental Treatment Services Scheme.
Services paid for by the board were provided by 1,652 doctors, 1,151 pharmacies and 903 dentists who had contracts with the Health Boards to provide services.
The overall cost per eligible person under the GMS scheme was £193, the doctors cost was £69 and the pharmacist's cost was £124, the report adds.
A breakdown of the figures shows that more than 150 family doctors earned more than £100,000 each for treating medical card holders and the average income for doctors under the scheme has risen to £55,000 last year.
Seven doctors earned over £140,000 last year and 20 were paid between £130,000 and £140,000.
Fifteen doctors earned between £120,000 and £130,000 while 70 were paid between £100,000 and £110,000
The report says that up to 1993, the average annual increase in the cost of drugs and medicines prescribed and dispensed under the scheme was 1O per cent. In the three years following that, the annual average has fallen to less than 7 per cent.
It says that the levelling off in the upward trend in the cost of medicines is being achieved through a number of measures, the most effective being the agreement on an indicative drug target for each doctor for their GMS patients.
