LOCAL patients and health staff “feel duped” after their experiences were minimised or simply left out of a review by the health regulator into the removal of emergency surgery from the SWAH.
Last summer RQIA launched a review of the pathways associated with the suspension of emergency general surgery (EGS) from the Enniskillen hospital.
At the time of the review launch, the terms of reference were published online by RQIA, and included a requirement to consider patient and population outcomes.
As such, local patients who had been transferred to Altnagelvin for emergency surgery, as well as staff, were invited to share their experiences of these pathways with the review team.
However, when findings of the review were published last week, only anecdotal reference was made to these often horrific and concerning patient stories.
Both the ‘Herald and campaigners Save Our Acute Services (SOAS) are aware of several very worrying experiences shared with the team that are not referred to in the report.
SOAS has now discovered the terms of reference that were published online were different from those published in the final report.
“We found when we started to look at the report there was an issue with the actual building block of the report, the terms of reference,” said Jimmy Hamill from SOAS.
“There were six changes. These changes weren’t highlighted to anybody, they weren’t published on their website, nobody was told about them.”
Full details of all six changes can be found on www.saveouracuteservices.org, however one of the most significant was the removal of a requirement in the terms of reference for the review to examine patient outcomes and the safety of services.
SOAS said since the publication of the report it had been contacted by many patients and staff who were upset when they were unable to find their own experiences in the report.
“A lot of the public feel duped,” said Mr Hamill, adding they found it to be “a mystery” that no safety issues were identified.
SOAS spokesman Donal O’Cofaigh said the apparent change to the terms of reference was “beyond shocking.”
“We must have a thorough investigation as to how such an essential service review could arrive at conclusions that are at odds with clear documented evidence that extended times to treatment have an adverse impact on patients outcomes,” said Mr O’Cofaigh.
The Department of Health has rejected the claim the terms of reference were changed.
“The terms of reference for the RQIA review were not changed,” said a DoH spokesman. “They are publicly available on the RQIA website and were followed throughout the process.
“The published RQIA report provides some minor summarising of the terms of reference. This involved no material changes to the full terms of reference, and no alterations to their meaning.”
“Anyone suggesting otherwise is either mistaken or is being deliberately misleading.
“To avoid any further misunderstanding or misrepresentation, RQIA has included the full terms of reference as a published appendix to the report on its website.”