Averil Power

A few thoughts: 1. A National Cancer Strategy 2026-2037 is essential for cancer service development in Ireland. It allows a substantive process through which all relevant stakeholders are given a clear opportunity to express opinions about how resources should be allocated in cancer services in Ireland over the next decade. 2. The @hseNCCP has been instrumental since its inception in delivering the National Cancer Strategy to Irish public hospitals. 3. Without an NCS + NCCP to deliver cancer services fairly, resource allocation into the future will likely return to “who knows who”, or “who shouts the loudest”, or “who has the biggest crisis”. I realise that everyone is busy, but it is worth taking time to think about an optimal approach to cancer prevention, risk adapted screening and cancer management in Ireland over the next 10 years, and come up with a plan.

Staffing levels, infrastructure availability and workflow processes are all interdependent. If it could be measured (difficult without an EHR) I think 90% of the variance in performance between centres across the country is likely to be explained by these parameters. In other words, there is no existing mechanism in public healthcare provision to match growing demand on individual services to resource allocation of public funding. In a healthcare insurance model, the money follows the patient. If those directly responsible for delivering or managing services have no realistic ability to influence WTE (staffing) or space (infrastructure) allocation in public hospitals, increasingly I think a universal healthcare insurance model is the only alternative that might be more functional. You treat more patients, the hospital is paid more, and the service that earns more money has a say in how it is allocated. The current approach i.e. waiting for a crisis to emerge, is suboptimal.

I spoke to Midwest Radio this morning on the way from the car park to the OPD clinic in Mayo. Just to be very clear, this isn’t a Galway issue, it isn’t a HSE West NorthWest issue, it is a national issue, affecting many sites across the country. Oncology services at UHG need more staff and space midwestradio.ie/news/oncolog…