Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS)
- What is the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS)?
- What services are covered by the PCRS scheme?
- How do healthcare providers get paid for their services?
- More information
What is the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS)?
The Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) pays the doctors, pharmacists, dentists and opticians for the free or reduced-cost healthcare they provide.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) manages the PCRS.
What services are covered by the PCRS scheme?
The PCRS scheme is how most of the free publicly funded healthcare services in the community are paid for including:
- Medical card services provided by doctors and pharmacists
- GP visit card services
- Drugs Payment Scheme
- Prescribed drugs and medicines services provided by community pharmacists
- Dental services for medical card holders
- Ophthalmic services (sight tests and eye health) for medical card holders
- Long-Term Illness Scheme for certain long term medical conditions
How do healthcare providers get paid for their services?
When doctors, pharmacists, dentists and opticians provide healthcare services for the Health Service Executive (HSE), the HSE uses the PCRS to pay them.
How much they are paid, and other conditions of service are negotiated by the Department of Health and the relevant professional bodies.
More information
The PCRS also issues Annual Reports with information and statistics on all the primary care services it supports.
You can see up-to-date data about these services on the PCRS Reporting and Open Data Web Portal.