It is 8pm on a school night. Your GP surgery closed hours ago, someone in the house has a fever that has been climbing since dinner, and you are standing in the kitchen weighing up an out-of-hours drive against just waiting it out. You have seen a family GP plan mentioned somewhere, maybe HealthDoc's, and you want a straight answer before you enter a card number: what does it actually cover, what does it cost this year rather than a promotional number, and is it worth it for a household that already gets some GP care free.
The quick answer: HealthDoc's Family Plan is a monthly or yearly subscription that covers same-day phone and video GP consultations, prescriptions, and certificates for everyone you add to it, billed once for the whole household rather than per visit. It is not for emergencies. If anyone in your family has chest pain, difficulty breathing, a serious injury, or any symptom that feels like it cannot wait, call 999 or 112, or go to your nearest emergency department, rather than booking online.
One thing worth knowing before you read any further: if your child is under 8, they may already be entitled to free GP care in Ireland, subscription or not. More on that below, because it changes the maths for some families and we would rather you knew it than found out after paying for a year.
What HealthDoc's Family Plan actually is
Most of HealthDoc's services are pay-per-visit: book a consultation, pay for that consultation, done. The Family Plan is different. It is a subscription, billed monthly or yearly, that gives everyone on it unlimited GP consultations rather than charging per booking. One household bill replaces a stack of separate charges every time someone needs a doctor.
That trade only makes sense for households that actually use it often enough. A family who sees a doctor online once or twice a year is usually better off paying per visit. A family juggling recurring prescriptions, the odd school-note request, and the occasional out-of-hours worry across several people is the household this plan is built for.
A rough way to check which household you are: add up how many times in the past year someone in your family needed a GP visit, a repeat prescription, or a certificate outside your usual surgery's hours or availability. If that number is low, pay-per-visit almost always costs less. If it climbs into double figures across the household, especially once you count near-misses like a Saturday morning worry that waited until Monday because nobody wanted to pay for out-of-hours care, the subscription starts looking like the cheaper habit rather than the more expensive one.
What's included, and what it costs
The Family Plan currently costs €49 a month, or €42 a month billed annually (€504 a year, a real saving over paying monthly for twelve months). Every plan includes:
Unlimited GP consultations, by phone or video
Same-day appointments
Digital prescriptions
Medical certificates
Priority booking
Free follow-ups
That is everything in HealthDoc's Individual plan (€29 a month, or €24 a month billed annually), extended to cover the rest of your household rather than one person. If you have only ever needed a standalone certificate request outside a plan, the difference here is billing, not process: a teenager's school note or a parent's sick cert for work is covered by the monthly fee instead of paid for separately each time.
For comparison, a single pay-per-visit consultation currently costs €34.99 in standard hours (€39.99 out of hours or at the weekend), and a certificate-only request is €24.99 in standard hours (€29.99 out of hours or at the weekend). Three ordinary consultations and one certificate across a household, spread over a year, already costs more than three months of the subscription at the yearly rate. A household that rarely needs a doctor would spend less paying per visit. Do that maths for your own family before you decide either way, and check the current numbers on HealthDoc's live pricing page, since that is the one place we would rather you check than trust a number in an article that might age.
Who counts as a family member, and who sees what
A family member can be a spouse or partner, an elderly parent, a young child, or a teenager. You add children directly from your own account, entering their date of birth, gender, and their relationship to you. Adult dependants are different: you send them a private invite by email, and they accept it themselves, on their own terms, whenever they are ready.
That difference matters more than it sounds. As the plan owner, you see full appointments, prescriptions, and notes for every child you have added, because you are the one making decisions for them. For an adult dependant, you see only that they are on the plan and roughly how often they have booked. Their symptoms, their questionnaire answers, and their doctor's notes stay between them and the doctor, not you.
We built it this way on purpose. Privacy is a feature here, not an afterthought: a household plan should make healthcare easier to manage, not turn every adult on it into someone whose medical business their parent or partner can read. Booking for your household should not mean surveilling it.
The plan currently covers up to 4 family members, with larger households able to get in touch about covering more. Current pricing and the family-member limit are always on the Family Plan page, since it is the kind of number worth confirming at the moment you actually subscribe.
Before you subscribe: check if your child already gets GP care for free
Ireland already gives every child under 8 free GP care, regardless of how much their parents earn. It is not means-tested, it is not conditional on anything except the child's age and living in Ireland, and most parents of young children qualify without realising it. The HSE's Under 8s GP Visit Card covers free GP visits, developmental assessments at age 2 and 5, out-of-hours urgent GP care, and asthma care for children who have it. Medication costs and hospital charges are not covered, but the visits themselves are.
If your youngest child already has this card, or qualifies for one, that is worth registering for before anything else, subscription or not. It costs nothing and it covers exactly the kind of same-day, out-of-hours worry this article opened with.
None of that makes a Family Plan pointless for that household. It usually means the child's care is already handled, and the subscription's real value sits with everyone else on the plan: a partner, an older child past 8, a parent living with you, or the child themselves outside the hours or circumstances the free card actually reaches. Working out which of those applies to your own household is the maths that actually matters here, more than any number in this article.
It is also worth being clear about what the free card covers and what it does not. It is one child's GP visits, not a household's. It does not cover a partner, an older sibling, or a parent, and it does not include a repeat prescription sent straight to a pharmacy, a certificate delivered digitally, or same-day phone and video access without booking through your usual surgery or an out-of-hours service first. A Family Plan is not competing with the free card for that one child's routine visits. It is covering everyone and everything the free card was never designed to reach, under a single household subscription rather than a fresh decision, and a fresh charge, every time someone in the house needs a doctor.
How adding your family actually works
There is no separate signup for each person. Once you subscribe, the process is three steps from your own dashboard.
Subscribe. Pick monthly or yearly billing and create your account. The plan activates the same day.
Add your family. Add child profiles directly, or invite an adult dependant by email. Adults accept the invite on their own terms and keep control of their own medical record.
Book together. Book a consultation for any active family member from one dropdown in your account, rather than juggling separate logins for each person.
You can cancel at any time from your dashboard. If you do, children stay on file as part of your account but lose the plan's benefits, and any adult dependants are notified and revert to standard pay-per-visit booking on their own account. Nobody's medical history disappears, the plan simply stops covering new visits.
What a family plan won't do
A Family Plan is still elective, private telemedicine, not an emergency service and not a substitute for in-person care where one is genuinely needed. Nothing about a subscription changes that. If a doctor cannot properly assess something over phone or video, they will tell you that rather than guess, and the honest next step is your own GP or, for anything urgent, an emergency department.
It also will not replace your family's regular GP relationship, and it should not try to. Tell your usual GP about anything HealthDoc's doctors prescribe or advise, the same way you would want to know about care any other doctor gave your child. Coordinated care works better than care spread across doctors who never compare notes, subscription or not.
Being on the plan does not guarantee a particular outcome either. Booking a consultation, even an unlimited one, does not guarantee a prescription or certificate will be issued. The doctor reviews each request and decides what is actually appropriate, the same as they would for a paid one-off visit. A subscription buys access to that judgement as often as you need it, not a particular answer every time.
Every doctor on HealthDoc is registered with the Irish Medical Council, and you can check any doctor's registration yourself through the Council's own public register if you would rather verify that than take our word for it.
Frequently asked questions
Can children in Ireland get free GP care?
Yes, all children under 8 get a free GP visit card regardless of parental income, covering GP visits, assessments at age 2 and 5, out-of-hours urgent care, and asthma care. Register for it whether or not you also subscribe to anything else.
How much does a GP visit cost in Ireland?
Outside a medical card or GP visit card, private GP fees are not fixed by the government, so they vary by practice; it is worth asking your own GP surgery what they charge. HealthDoc's own pay-per-visit consultations currently cost €34.99 in standard hours, and a Family Plan replaces per-visit charges with one household subscription instead.
How many family members can I add to a family GP plan?
HealthDoc's Family Plan currently covers up to 4 family members, with larger households able to get in touch about covering more. Check the Family Plan page before you subscribe in case that figure has changed.
Can I add my parents to a family plan, not just my children?
Yes. Family membership covers a spouse or partner, an elderly parent, a young child, or a teenager. Adults you invite, including parents, accept their own invite and keep their own private medical record.
Is a family GP subscription worth it if my child already has a GP visit card?
Often still yes, just for different reasons. The card usually covers that child's own GP visits well. The subscription's value then sits with everyone else in the household, and with anything the free card does not reach for that child specifically.
What happens to my family plan if I cancel?
Children stay on your account but lose the plan's benefits. Adult dependants are notified and revert to normal pay-per-visit booking on their own account. You can cancel any time from your dashboard, and nobody's medical history is deleted.
Written by the HealthDoc team. This article is general information about how HealthDoc's Family Plan works and how it compares with Ireland's free GP care for young children. It is not medical advice and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor. Last reviewed 3 September 2026.
Ready to see if a Family Plan fits your household? Start a Family Plan, or book a one-off consultation if you would rather try it once first.