New Cancer services Forum

EuskalHerria

The Save Sligos Cancer Services (SSCS) have started up a new forum and are asking people to register so that a number of issues can be discussed with the group and also giving patients and the families of patients a place to talk.

You will need to register a username and password.Please send the address out to people and we'll get this going.

http://sscs.freeforums.org/

Captain Iggy

+1

This issue should never be forgotten about.

Wait until the inevitablity of someone you care for being affected by cancer and you will realise the sheer sin of withdrawing such services from the area - or any other for that matter.

Please read this article when you get the chance

Look at the line "The incidence of all cancers -- excluding non-melanoma skin cancer -- was higher than average in a band running across the north-east and north-midlands from Dublin to Sligo."

And in 2009, Cancer sufferers have to endure a 4 hour round trip for vital daily services. F**k that.

I hope those responsible who value anything higher than a fellow human's health and well-being get what they deserve eventually. This should not be a financial issue on any level, this is basic healthcare, there should be no expense spared.

Would you refuse payment for an operation/treatment if it was needed by a family member just because money's a little tight at the moment. I'm sure you would beg borrow or steal, and that should be the opinion of the HSE and government too.

Son Of A Vidic

It's a pity the unions never got as passionate about Cancer treatment and Health care as they have about a potential pay cut. If such real mobilisation had of occurred, then Sligo might still have it's breast cancer service. I spent many years in London working with Acute Leukemic patients. When I returned to St. James in 2003, I was disgusted with what a 'flagship' hospital offered it's patients. The staff as usual were absolutely fantastic, but facilities were lacking. Some tests had to be done in the Labs at UCD, patients were sent through rush hour traffic to other sites for parts of their treatment.
I just couldn't not understand why Irish patients could not be given their treatment in one hospital/location. When I moved back to Sligo, I was again amazed at the lack of a complete care packages. What angered me was that the staff and patients all excepted this - there was no fight or protest. This was before the Drumm got his knife out. The Celtic Tiger did nothing for our health care facilities, people contribute and pay for the health service with their hard work and taxes. People need to realise this, we owe the government nothing - it owes us a 21st health service that will take us from the cradle to the grave, with facilities befitting a 1st world nation. So why don't the union fat cats get off their arse's and mobilise for a just cause for a change.

Captain Iggy

It is becoming clearer and clearer with every day and most news stories the culture in this country of maintaining ones own interest without any or very little regard for other people.

There IS altruism in the majority of people, we all know this from the people we know and care for. However it seems the majority of those with influence don't show this.

I refuse to blame the banks, unions or government as institutions for every problem we encounter. It's just too easy. We must remember these are made up of separate individuals and the effects are due to interralations and interactions. It is time to rout out these self serving and shortsighted individuals who have become a malignant influence in the institutions they represent.

What type of person would knowingly do the things Mary Harney and Prof. Drumm have done when they have been made aware of the 'on the ground' effects they have, the suffering it has caused.

Is the financial 'bottom line' more important than a person's well being? This goes against the principle of 'in the public interest' a ministerialship surely has. Or is Mary Harney dancing to the tune of a greater power? It seems a little too coincedental that a private hospital is now being planned for Sligo in the wake of removed Cancer Services.

Why aren't the supposed opposition parties not jumping on this fact and exposing the crookery it unashamedly is?

Have we become so dosile that that those who want to push their own greed-based agenda are now flaunting the fact they can get away with anything they want?

EuskalHerria

medicman2009 wrote: »

So why don't the union fat cats get off their arse's and mobilise for a just cause for a change.

Firstly as long as your anger towards the unions is measured out to those in government who are taking the services away, and essentially goin to inflict deaths upon people aswell.

It is sad that a campaign, which did get massive support, did not get more. There are many questions to be asked but at the end of the day it is pointless to sit about and talk in retrospect. We can only move forwards now and look towards stratedgies to continue the fight for cancer services in Sligo.
Hopefully if enough people join and have an input on the forum, then there can be enough correspondance with patients and families about having to travel to Dublin and Galway for care, that can strenghten the cause and hopefully, do some good in the continuing fight.

EuskalHerria

Captain Iggy wrote: »

Why aren't the supposed opposition parties not jumping on this fact and exposing the crookery it unashamedly is?

The fact is, and I have been slated for this before but I stand by it, that most opposition parties cannot guarantee more than what is happening with the removal of services. FG are the opposite side of the same coin and if brought into power, no matter how much lip service they pay to their "genuine" concern at the removal if the party went in favour of moving the services then the sheep, that are supposed to be representatives of the best interests of their electorate at heart, would gladly follow to avoid rocking the boat within the party.
The reality is, and can be seen with local FF politicians, is that the career is more important than the community. They could have easily stood up to Brian cowen and Mary Harney and demanded that the services were not removed from SGH and made it clear that they would take the FF support of the northwest with them, but instead they chose to continue supporting the party that are infliciting death by geography on the northwest!!
So can we expect oppositions political movements, that are essentially the same with a different name, to do any different? You might have more faith than I have.

Basically to cut a long rant short, do not expect any more from those in opposition parties, few are genuine about their commitments to the cancer services in SGH as can be seen in the refusal to sign the SSCS pledge, but instead sending "letters of support". Basically it was an excuse for later, so that any opposition that want to use the fight for cancer services in SGH didn't have themselves fully committed if they were to later backtrack.

Son Of A Vidic

EuskalHerria wrote: »

Firstly as long as your anger towards the unions is measured out to those in government who are taking the services away, and essentially goin to inflict deaths upon people as well.

I absolutely agree, don't get me wrong I basically view all politicians as spineless windbags. I wouldn't expect anything less from them. Unions unfortunately, have gotten in to bed with them to often though.

Victor

In advocating a bells and whistles service, people might consider this article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jun/13/nhs-death-rates-huge-disparity

Huge disparity in NHS death rates revealed
Patients less likely to die in bigger hospitals, reveals exclusive Guardian investigation
Sarah Boseley, Gozde Zorlu and Rob Evans
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 June 2010 19.15 BST


Doctors in the NHS do not know how well they are performing and whether they are more likely than their colleagues to kill or cure their patients, because of a widespread failure to collect the information, a Guardian investigation reveals.

The results of a major exercise looking at one particular procedure – vascular surgery – show a massive variation in death rates among patients admitted for planned operations and reveal that some hospitals have unacceptably high mortality.

It demonstrates the case for the closure of small hospital units, which the government has put on hold. Death rates vary from less than one in 50 in some hospitals to more than one in 10 in others.

The investigation reveals the hollowness of patient choice, which the coalition, like Labour before it, has made the centrepiece of NHS policy. The data amassed by the Guardian from surgeons at 116 hospital trusts after an extensive freedom of information trawl is not publicly available – and is at odds with what appears on the NHS Choices website, set up to help patients choose where to be treated.

The Guardian investigation focused on vascular surgery, where there is a significant risk of dying in planned operations, but the conclusions apply to every other branch of medicine – with the exception of heart surgery, where doctors collect and publish their individual results. They embraced transparency following the Bristol babies scandal in the late 1990s, when doctors were struck off the medical register over the deaths of babies who underwent operations for heart defects that they might have survived at other hospitals.

The investigation reveals that:

• More than a decade on from Bristol, doctors are failing to collect and publish data that would tell them and their patients how well or badly they are doing and allow patients to chose a hospital where their risks are lowest.

• Death rates in planned vascular surgery for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA – to prevent a burst artery) vary from under 2% in some hospitals to at least 10% in 10 of them. More than 5,000 of the operations are carried out each year – most of them planned admissions in which the patient decides where to go for surgery.

• Patients are less likely to die in the bigger, busier hospital units where surgical teams are more skilled because they do more of the operations. The results strongly suggest that smaller units should close. This presents a major challenge to the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, who has stopped all hospital reorganisation.

The most worrying death rates were at Scarborough hospital in Yorkshire, where 29% of patients scheduled in advance for AAA surgery died in the three-year period from 2006 to 2008. The national average was just over 4%. Scarborough says it has now stopped offering the operation.

Results for planned surgery at several other hospitals also gave cause for concern, including Gateshead on 12.9%, Hull on 9%, Pennine Acute Trust on 8.4% and Leeds on 7.1%. Gateshead and Hull blamed a high number of difficult cases, Pennine argued there had been an issue around the way transferred cases were recorded, which is now resolved. Leeds pointed out that it takes difficult cases and has brought its death rates steadily down.

Some leading surgeons believe that for best results, a hospital needs to carry out at least 50 AAA operations a year. Yet very many hospitals across the UK see less than 20 cases a year. Dartford and Gravesham had just five in three years, Mid-Staffordshire had nine and Scarborough had 14. Of the 116 hospitals that gave the Guardian data, 35 did fewer than 20 operations a year and 76 did fewer than 50.

The data also shows the UK lagging in Europe. The second Vascunet report, on vascular surgery across 10 European countries in 2008, found the average death rate was just 2.8%.

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS and a former heart surgeon, who was involved in successful efforts to publish mortality data in cardiac surgery said: "Surgeons have a moral and professional duty to know what they are doing, how well they are doing it and to use that information to help them improve – otherwise they have no right to be doing it at all." He intends to take steps to ensure that senior doctors personally take responsibility for the accuracy of data relating to their specialist area that is published by their trust – whether in surgery, cancer care, diabetes or arthritis.

Peter Holt, clinical lecturer in vascular surgery at St George's Healthcare NHS Trust in London, who helped the Guardian analyse the results, said they demonstrated "significant variations in the death rates after planned and emergency aneurysm repair in England. These results support those that have been published in the medical literature since 2007. Variations in death rates do not equate to deficiencies in the quality of care received, but what is clear is that these results require further investigation, which must begin with confirming the accuracy of the data before hospitals are labelled as dangerous".

David Mitchell of the Vascular Society, which has been collecting mortality data on a voluntary basis from surgeons for several years but does not publish it, said they had embarked on a quality improvement programme, aimed at bringing the average death rate down to 3.5%.