Cork University Hospital boss expects full staffing for cancer unit
The head of Cork University Hospital (CUH) has said he is satisfied that a full staffing complement will be in place when a new €40m radiation oncology unit opens next October, despite a warning that posts “central to the delivery of cancer care” are either vacant or unfilled.
Responding to a statement from the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) that four of the seven permanent radiation oncology posts at the hospital are “either vacant or filled on a temporary basis”, Tony McNamara said they had interviewed for two of those posts “and there are candidates starting in the next couple of months, before the first patients are treated in mid-October”.
Another post had only been vacated in May, he said “so we are now proceeding to get that post filled as well”.
The fourth post was the subject of discussions with University College Cork with a view to creating a professor of radiation oncology, the first for the region. A medical oncology post is also vacant.
IHCA president Donal O’Hanlon said the radiology department at CUH “has only about 80% of its requirement of 18 posts”.
Mr McNamara said there was an issue nationally in relation to consultant recruitment and the timescale it takes to fill posts — on average, 22 months.
He said the new unit, known as the Glandore Centre, “really marks Cork out as being different from every other cancer centre in Ireland because all of the treatment modalities on site”. However, he conceded the hospital is not currently meeting national targets for referring patients for treatment.
According to the HSE’s latest performance profile data almost half (44.6%) of patients in urgent need of assessment for breast cancer are not referred for evaluation within the required two-week timeframe.
Lung cancer and prostate cancer referrals are also below target, while one third of radiotherapy patients (target 90%) are not referred within the recommended 15 days.
Mr McNamara said referral times would improve in the new centre which would have state-of-the-art equipment. He said the new equipment would “not have the downtime for servicing” that their existing equipment has “and so it will be a much better service, a more responsive service for patients”.
The centre, where the majority of patients will be treated on a day case basis, will allow public patients avail of treatments currently not available in public hospitals, such as surface-guided radiation treatment (SGRT), which speeds up and improves the accuracy of treatment. SGRT is funded by Cork charity Aid Cancer Treatment at a cost of €800,000.
