Minister for Health Mary Harney defended the strategy of designating eight hospitals as specialist cancer centres, and said she was confident that problems revealed in the Waterford report had been rectified, or were being addressed.
An unpublished report into services at the hospital, one of the designated “centres of excellence” for breast cancer, has found it is failing to meet 36 of 48 national standards.
The assessment of Waterford Regional Hospital was done by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) on October 2nd; at around the same time, patients from three other hospitals in the region were moved to Waterford. HIQA measured the hospital against the national quality assurance standards for breast cancer treatment.
The Minister said that at the time the report was researched, none of the eight centres would have met the standards, either because they didn’t have the volume of patients, the clinical expertise or the diagnostic equipment at the time.
“Some of [the issues] have been addressed and eliminated, others are in the process of being addressed because we’re recruiting new consultants into the cancer control programme,” she said.
“Some of them have yet to begin. Some consultants are coming here each month. We’ve had a number of new oncologists, we’ve had a number of surgeons, we have a number of other specialists currently being recruited.”
Ms Harney said the purpose of hiring Prof Tom Keane as director of the National Cancer Control Programme was to apply new standards and to reorganise cancer services, “and he is doing that very effectively”.
She said Prof Keane had told a Cabinet sub-committee that by the end of this year he believed Ireland would have one of the top three breast cancer services in the world.
“I find that very encouraging. And he is now moving on to deal in the same way with prostate cancer and lung cancer. So I cannot overemphasise the importance of putting the resources in and reorganising the services around the eight centres,” she added.
Earlier today, the regional director for cancer services in the southeast said many issues raised in the report have since being addressed.
Prof Ian Wilson, regional director for cancer services in the south east, said since the report was done, "a lot has happened in Waterford, and many of the issues which are outlined in the report don't really reflect the accuracy as to either what was happening then and what is happening now on the ground".
Speaking on RTÉ, Prof Wilson said: "For example there is mention made of guided biopsies . . . there was a deficit in Waterford in relation to a particular type of guided biopsy which has now being put in place . . . so this is a report, I would say, at the start of a process. It was like doing the mock exams before the Leaving, and that's where we're at."
Asked how many of the national standards Waterford Regional Hospital would make today, the consultant surgeon said: "I think we would have addressed all of them, and we will pass most of them. We still do not have all the personnel in place, we are working on that . . . but it is a work in progress, and I think the report today would be significantly different than a year ago."
Prof Wilson disputed the term "centre of excellence" and said Waterford was instead a "designated cancer centre" at the moment. However, he expressed the hope that such reports could be used to "identify deficits in the system all over the country and address them".
Questioned as to whether the hospital was receiving the required resources, he said Waterford had a "very good relationship" with the HSE Cancer Control Programme under Prof Tom Keane, "who are very readily listening to us and proving us with the appropriate services and funding".
Prof Brendan Drumm, chief executive officer of the Health Service Executive, said today he was surprised at the high media profile given to the report's findings.
"This is data from April 2008 . . . pretty soon after we established the cancer control programme. That data was then published in October. We've moved on a year from that data," he said. "That is a completely changed situation today, so for us now to be using data that relates back to when we were essentially establishing the cancer control programme doesn't make a lot of sense.
"Yes, we had huge difficulties in areas like cancer control . . . but an awful lot has been done since then [April] and there is a lot more still to be done."
Prof Drumm said if the same assessment was done today, Waterford Regional would meet "80 to 90 per cent" of the standards, and that over the next year all the criteria would be met. He said it was "simplistic" to suggest a switch could be flicked to changed the Irish health service.
The HSE chief said patients attending the hospital would "fall under the care of superb group of surgeons led by Ian Wilson." He pledged cancer care and waiting times in Ireland would see an "enormous" improvement from three or four years ago.