A REGULATION and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) review has offered campaigners hope that sense will prevail and the Department of Health will bring forward plans to restore emergency general surgery at the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH).
Local hospital campaign group, Save Our Acute Services (SOAS), has welcomed this week’s announcement by the RQIA that it has been commissioned by the Department of Health to conduct a review of the pathways associated with the ‘temporary’ suspension of emergency general surgery at the SWAH.
The move comes a week after SOAS submitted a 131-page dossier with 53 appendices numbering 1,702 pages detailing a range of concerns collated by the campaign research team. The document included a focus on the clinical pathways for patients due to the absence of emergency surgery at the SWAH.
The campaign is now urging members of the public, their relatives, and health and social care workers in the southwest to step forward and provide evidence directly to RQIA.
“As part of our 18-month campaign to restore emergency general surgery to South West Acute Hospital, a team of SOAS researchers have been compiling evidence on cases which document the adverse experiences that have resulted,” SOAS spokesperson, Donal O’Cofaigh, said.
“Combined with SOAS’ FOI-driven research, this has proven invaluable in presenting a robust, evidence-based, and comprehensive critique detailing how our community has been totally left behind.
“The detailed submission to RQIA also highlights the extent of Western Trust’s misrepresentation of mitigations and reiterates our demand for a truly independent investigation into what has happened and, most importantly, how it has left our community bereft of timely access to basic and life-saving medical procedures in an emergency.
“It is pretty much unheard of that RQIA would conduct an investigation on this scale with this scope.
“The review will make an assessment and recommendations for the future.
“The fact that this is happening demonstrates that our concerns have been recognised and that RQIA, and indeed Minister for Health Robin Swann, have been listening.
“It is vital for our community that patients, relatives and health care workers having first-hand experiences of the impact that loss of emergency general surgery at SWAH has had now raise their voice.”
SOAS will be organising a public meeting for the community to submit their experiences and concerns over the loss of acute and emergency surgery at the SWAH to the RQIA review.
Details of the meeting will be confirmed soon.
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