Madam, – We feel obliged to address Fintan O’Toole’s piece (Opinion, April 28th), in relation to the self-assessment and subsequent validation of the quality review of the symptomatic breast disease service at Waterford Regional Hospital.
Mr O’Toole’s “conundrum” is based on a misunderstanding of the document he purports to have seen. The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) initiated a quality review of symptomatic breast services in 2008. This survey involved two phases – the first phase involved a self assessment filled out and submitted by individual hospitals in April 2008.
The second phase of the quality review programme involved a validation by HIQA in October 2008 of the April self-assessment process.
This process involved a visit to the hospitals by members of HIQA to validate, through documentation, the previously submitted information supporting the self assessment. As such, this assessment was based on data which is one year old and was not an inspection of the status of the centre in October.
In practice, the major issue identified was that Waterford Regional Hospital was not routinely measuring against the standards, largely because of the absence of a database that would allow for the integration of data between the symptomatic breast centre and other in-house and outside information systems.
We are confident that all of the deficiencies identified have/are being addressed and expect that Waterford Regional Hospital will be fully compliant with the national standards when the next phase of the HIQA audit occurs at the end of 2009. – Yours, etc,
Prof TOM KEANE,
Interim Director National
Cancer Control Programme and
IAN WILSON,
Consultant Surgeon, Regional
Director of Cancer Services –
South East Region,
National Cancer Control
Programme,
Kings Inns House,
Parnell Street,
Dublin 1.