Madam, – The Minister for Health justifies her decision to choose St James’s Hospital as a cancer centre of excellence over St Luke’s Hospital in Rathgar on the grounds that “experts” advised her to do this.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, I have seen the marks these experts obtained. Overall the experts gave St Luke’s a weighted mark of 3,965. They gave 8,897 marks to St James’s.
Marks given for quality of cancer service delivery are unbelievable to me as a St Luke’s patient – 909 for St Luke’s as opposed to 1,362 for St James’s.
Patients were not consulted. We hear ad nauseam the mantra “best outcomes for patients”. Patients and their families say: save St Luke’s.
Three of these experts were Irish public servants and three were based outside Ireland.
Tomorrow TDs debate the Third stage of the Health (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which will dissolve the board and transfer the land and all the assets of the hospital to the HSE.
To your readers I say, say your prayers that a few Government TDs will have the courage to do what is right – to put patients before politics – and support an Opposition amendment which will save this existing centre of excellence.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – As a former patient, I wish to add my despairing voice to those who lament the imminent closure of Ireland’s only existing medical centre of excellence, St Luke’s (Cancer) Hospital in Rathgar (June 26th).
I have read how John Gormley and Chris Andrews mistakenly think that retaining the site at St Luke’s for public health use is saving the hospital. It is not. I have read the insulting platitudes of those politicians who managed to stir themselves to “contribute” to the “debate” on the Health Bill 2010; a Bill that will abolish the board of St Luke’s and allow this medical and spiritual gem of a facility to be swallowed up by the HSE monster.
If this happens, the immeasurable benefits of this haven of dignity will be lost forever. Priceless, unaccountable assets – including its wonderful staff – will disappear, scattered to the four winds, based on the opinion of six “experts”. This “advice” on the 18-acre site where St Luke’s is located was offered in the heady Celtic Tiger days of 2005 when our economy was booming and at a time when Ireland was busy selling it soul.
St Luke’s holistic ethos contributes to its excellent caring and curing reputation. Patients and their families have testified to this ethos by raising over €25 million towards equipment and upgrading the hospital since 1980. No other public hospital can boast such voluntary monetary support. Yet it has been decided that St Luke’s is superfluous to requirements in this wonderful plan that our Government have to reform the HSE. Under this plan, many areas – including my own county of Donegal – will have no closer “centres of excellence” in the State and we will have lost one of the best cancer facilities in the western world.
It is time for us to tell the Government that it will gain nothing by closing St Luke’s down and that Irish society will lose everything that it stands for if it goes ahead with this out-dated proposal. We need to retain St Luke’s enviable services as a symbol of what Ireland stands for now and in the future. If this happens, future generations will recognise that Irish politicians in 2010 recovered their senses and did not sell their souls based on bombastic bean-counters’ baloney.
– Yours, etc,