Breast cancer services at the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar are to be shut down by the Health Service Executive. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
No new breast cancer patients will be referred there and about 600 women a year who used the service will be referred instead to the Mater hospital in Dublin.
The ending of the Mullingar service was announced last evening when the HSE listed the public hospitals with breast cancer services it was prepared to stand over.
It said 20 of its 22 hospitals providing breast cancer care hold weekly multidisciplinary team meetings to discuss patient care, which is considered essential for best practice.
Two hospitals do not meet this standard. They are the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar and the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise, which has been at the centre of controversy since it emerged that seven women who attended the hospital had been wrongly told they did not have breast cancer.
While mammography services at Portlaoise have been suspended pending the outcome of a review of over 3,000 mammograms taken at the hospital, the HSE said the rest of the breast cancer services at that hospital could continue for the moment. However, its breast cancer service will have to be linked to St Vincent's hospital in Dublin for weekly multidisciplinary team meetings in future.
The 20 hospitals providing breast cancer care, where weekly multidisciplinary team meetings take place and which the HSE has confidence in, are the Mater, St Vincent's, St James's, Beaumont, Tallaght and Blanchardstown in Dublin; St Luke's in Kilkenny; Wexford General; Waterford Regional; Clonmel; Cork University and South Infirmary in Cork; Kerry General; Limerick Regional; St John's in Limerick; University College Hospital in Galway; Mayo General; Sligo General; Letterkenny General; and Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda.
"Triple assessment is available through these centres, either on site or through an affiliated centre," the HSE said. With triple assessment, patients have their diagnosis assessed by a team including a radiologist, a surgeon and a pathologist, minimising the risk of cancers being missed.
The HSE stressed the decision to end breast cancer services in Mullingar was not as a result of concern about the care of individual patients. It said the move was part of its phasing out of smaller cancer care centres as it moves to put in place eight centres of excellence by the end of 2009. Already this year 13 smaller hospitals have been told to stop treating breast cancer.
Mullingar was the next smallest centre, having seen only 26 new breast cancer patients last year, and as the consultant surgeon there is due to retire it would have been inappropriate, the HSE said, to recruit a new surgeon given plans to move to centres of excellence.
Dr Mary Hynes, assistant national director with the HSE, said the Mater hospital was prepared to accept the patients from Mullingar. Asked if the Mater would get extra resources to treat the Mullingar patients, she said: "We will be having discussions with the Mater in terms of what their requirements are". Just four HSE hospitals are currently seeing more than 150 new breast cancer cases a year, which is the number recommended for a centre of excellence. These are the Mater, St Vincent's, Galway's University College Hospital and the South Infirmary in Cork.
Meanwhile it has emerged that two private hospitals, the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin and the Bon Secours private hospital in Tralee, have stopped breast cancer surgery.