Sligo GPs to disregard HSE notices

FAMILY DOCTORS working in the catchment area of Sligo General Hospital say they will disregard  notices from the Health Servive Executive suggesting that breast cancer patients be referred to one of the eight centres designated under the National Cancer Strategy.

The controversy about the proposed transfer of the services from Sligo to University College Hospital Galway is reaching a head as GPs yesterday reiterated their opposition and insisted they would continue to refer patients to Sligo.

The development came as the local Save Sligo Cancer Services lobby group was informed that the petitions committee of the European Parliament had decided to refer its case to the European Commission.

Spokesman Killian McLoughlin said the lobby group had argued that people in the region  did not have equal access to the health service and were being discriminated against on the basis of geography and demographics.

"This is brilliant news because it shows that while nobody in authority in Ireland is listening to us, we are now going to get a hearing in Europe," he said.

In the past two weeks GPs in the northwest have received letters from the HSE which contain referral forms listing the eight designated centres to which patients should be referred.

Dr Frank Hayes, spokesman for the Co Sligo General Practitioners Society, said  GPs in the area had received referral forms for breast services from the National Cancer Control Programme. "These forms do not provide the option of referral to Sligo General Hospital and as a consequence are been disregarded for the present," he said.

He said local GPs had full confidence in the multidisciplinary breast cancer services in the hospital. Sligo-based consultant surgeon Tim O'Hanrahan said he believed local GPs and the hospital's consultants supported the campaign to keep breast cancer services in Sligo. Staff had not been told when the transfer would take place, he said, but GPs were being urged to start referring patients to any  of the eight centres.

"It will be very interesting to see what happens when we are ordered to stop," Mr O'Hanrahan said. "I will have to consider my own position in this hospital and this health service as it currently  does not inspire confidence."

The local lobby group will picket the National Cancer Conference in Dublin on Monday which is to be addressed  by Minister for Health Mary Harney and by Prof Tom Keane, director of the National Cancer Strategy.

A HSE spokeswoman said all GPs nationally were supplied with the National Symptomatic Breast Referral Form in November  containing contact details of all designated breast cancer centres and GPs were asked to use the form as the standard method of referral.

She said symptomatic breast services continued to be delivered at Sligo and GPs who currently referred to the service would be informed before the discontinuation of that service in 2009.