THE PLANNED transfer of breast cancer services from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda to Dublin's Beaumont Hospital by next week has been deferred for the the moment, it has been confirmed.
Prof Tom Keane, interim director of the National Cancer Control Programme, stated in a letter to GPs in the northeast in the past few days that "due to unforeseen circumstances" the transfer would be delayed so that all required services could be in place in Beaumont before the move took place.
"Many aspects of this plan are progressing well. However, due to unforeseen circumstances we may not be able to have the full range of radiology services available in Beaumont Hospital for mid-November, as previously planned. We have therefore decided to delay the transfer of services until a full complement of radiology services are in place," he wrote.
"The National Cancer Control Programme is of the view that services should not be transferred until the unit in Beaumont is fully operational and capable of taking on the workload," he added.
His letter was issued just days after the Louth Sinn Féin TD Arthur Morgan claimed women in his area already being referred by GPs to a breast cancer clinic at Beaumont were being left waiting for appointments.
The issue was brought to his attention, he said, by a Drogheda woman who contacted Beaumont two weeks after being referred by her GP to be told by the person who answered the phone that there was nobody available to deal with her GP's letter and there was a pile of referral letters which had to be dealt with.
"It is deeply disturbing that hundreds of women who were referred by their GPs to the Beaumont Hospital breast clinic have not been given appointments as there was no one available to set them up," he said.
"It is obvious that there should be no transfer of services from the Dóchas Centre in Drogheda to the Beaumont breast clinic until such time as proper arrangements are in place," he added.
The HSE said the transfer had been put off - not because of Mr Morgan's claims, which it has dismissed - but because all of the radiology resources were not yet in place on the Beaumont site.
It said the surgical teams at Beaumont and Drogheda were working together to ensure that all patients were appropriately triaged or prioritised and seen in a timely manner. "A final date for the completion of the transition of the service has not been set . . . in the interim, GPs in the Drogheda region have been asked to continue to refer to Drogheda, where all referrals are being triaged based on urgency, according to existing practice," it added.
The transfer of services is part of a plan to move all breast cancer services from smaller hospitals to eight specialist centres by early next year. Services at several smaller hospitals have already transferred to the centres.