Cancer treatment project faces three-year delay, HSE told

A Government plan for a network of radiotherapy services for cancer patients across the State by 2011 may not be achievable unless the way the project is due to be delivered is changed, it has been claimed.

The director of the project, Tony O'Brien, told a board meeting of the Health Service Executive (HSE) in December that it could take three years longer than expected to roll out the plan if it is done, as Minister for Health Mary Harney planned, by way of public private partnership (PPP). The plan to improve services by 2011 was announced by Ms Harney in July 2005.

Mr O'Brien told the HSE board meeting last month that the HSE was not informed prior to her announcement that the project was to be delivered by way of PPP. As a result, groundwork that could have been done for the project had not been carried out.

He told The Irish Times yesterday: "If the project proceeds on its current procurement path, then the estimated completion time for the overall network is mid-2013 to mid-2014."

But he said that arising out of concerns that it was taking too long to secure more radiotherapy machines under the PPP model, Ms Harney had agreed last September that two new ones for Beaumont and St James's hospitals in Dublin could be secured in the conventional way.

He said the procurement process for these began last month and it was envisaged the facilities would be operational in the first quarter of 2009.

He added that a review was now under way to look at whether or not all the other elements of the project should be taken out of the PPP model.

This was to be the first health sector project delivered by PPP.

The plan announced by Ms Harney in 2005 involved the provision of 23 additional linear accelerators (the equipment which delivers the radiotherapy) to increase the capacity to provide the treatment at four large centres.

Two are to be in Dublin, at St James's (to which St Luke's in Rathgar was to move) and Beaumont hospitals, and one each in Cork and Galway. These would be backed up by satellite centres in Waterford and Limerick. The plan also involved making arrangements for patients in the northwest to receive their treatment at Belfast City Hospital.

A document detailing Mr O'Brien's briefing to the HSE's December board meeting on the timeframe for the roll-out of radiotherapy services, and the fact that the roll-out could be delayed until 2014, was obtained yesterday by Newstalk. It was marked strictly confidential. Ms Harney rejected claims that she and the HSE had allowed the timetable for the project to slip. But Opposition parties reacted angrily to the suggestion that people might have to wait even longer than anticipated for better radiotherapy services.

The Irish Cancer Society's chief executive John McCormack said waiting times were already too long for radiotherapy. He said men could be waiting 15 weeks for a first appointment for radiotherapy treatment after they were diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The HSE and Ms Harney claimed the December document was a "historic" one and that much progress had already been made in implementing the national plan for radiation oncology. Ms Harney also said the HSE was examining options to speed up delivery of the plan.

She said neither she nor HSE management accepted that the only option for full delivery was 2013 or 2014. "There are no grounds for political scaremongering among cancer patients based on one earlier HSE document," she said.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the Government was playing politics with people's lives and the plan hadn't been properly thought out.

Labour's health spokeswoman Liz McManus said the Government had broken its promise to patients requiring radiotherapy treatment.