In a packed function room of a Belfast hotel, there were audible gasps when a Co Meath doctor addressed Northern GPs last weekend. For Stout, a GP based in east Belfast, an area of the city once a bastion of unionism, healthcare transcends politics. Key to “things being flipped” in the Republic was increased public funding for patients entitled to free GP medical care, he added. Those with chronic diseases were proactively managed by GP surgeries instead of hospitals and the results were “transformative”. “I severely doubt that either of them will stay in the North,” she said, while younger Northern GPs living in Border areas are choosing to work in the Republic.
