Letterkenny Consultants to turn Patients away
June 1st, 2006From Highland Radio:
LGH consultants refuse any new breast care patients
The Department of Health has been informed that consultants at Letterkenny General Hospital are to refuse any new breast care patients from tomorrowThey have taken the action as part of their calls for the breast surgeon’s position at Letterkenny General Hospital be made permanent.
The medical team at Letterkenny General will attend to patients referred before June 1st and awaiting their first appointment.
During a visit to Donegal earlier this week the Tainaste expressed her hope the action would be averted.
Source: http://www.highlandradio.com/news.php?articleid=000002709
The entire situation around Cancer Care services in the North West continues to get worse and worse. The Consultants in Letterkenny General are in a very awkward position- they are not properly sanctioned on a permanent basis, which can leave them open to personal liability on claims filed against them (which would usually be filed against the HSE), and means that their personal careers are not as secure as they would be if their positions were sanctioned on a full-time basis.
But that cannot justify this course of action. We have often talked about Donegal as the “Forgotten County”, and spoken about how the Government would never let services in Dublin be as poor or temporary as they are here. In this case, the medical board in Letterkenny General Hospital has made the decision, which will now see new patients presenting with Breast Cancer symptoms forced to seek treatment away from Letterkenny. The HSE will now have to make arrangements for them elsewhere.
The only people this will impact is the patients themselves, and their families. Using them as leverage against the HSE will not work- the HSE have ignored the human stories of thousands of Donegal patients travelling to Dublin for radiation therapy, they are not going to start listening all of a sudden.
Every politician, at every level, is doing everything they can to ensure that cancer services are retained, and extended, in Letterkenny. Actions like this do not help the cause; if anything, they will lead to a reduction in services as the HSE will see that Letterkenny is no longer accepting patients, and then start accounting for our patients as being treated in other hospitals.
I would appeal to those involved in this decision to come back from the edge, for the sake of the patients and their families. The Chief Executive of Altnagelvin hospital in Derry has said this week that she believes a deal can be done with Letterkenny, and the decision should be made before June 23rd as I discuss here (third paragraph).
This has not been an easy post to write. Staff at Letterkenny General Hospital work in extremely difficult circumstances. But this action, I fear, will be counter-productive, at best.
Update: The story is being picked up in the media elsewhere and on this Health website