STANDARDS set out by the Department of Health are preventing the return of emergency general surgery (EGS) to the SWAH, the Stormont Health Committee has heard.
In 2022, in the months before the ‘temporary’ removal of EGS from the Enniskillen hospital, the Department of Health launched the Review of General Surgery in Northern Ireland. This set out a set of new standards that must be met by hospitals providing an EGS service.
It had long been believed these standards had been preventing the return of the life-saving surgery service to the SWAH, and at last week’s health committee meeting chairman it was again suggested this was the case.
Under direct questioning from the committee chair, Trust representatives acknowledged there was no realistic prospect of the former EGS model returning to SWAH.
Any reinstatement, they said, would be as an entirely new commissioned service – a decision that would require departmental and ministerial action.
“There is inevitability this won’t be back because once you have stopped it, you cannot meet the new standards,” Mr Frawley told the committee.
SOAS reaction
A delegation from Save Our Acute Services (SOAS) attended the meeting, and outlined the mounting human toll the ‘temporary’ removal of emergency surgery has had on the community.
They revealed an independent health statistician had been commissioned to analyse the Western Trust’s claims that patient outcomes had improved since the service was removed.
According to SOAS, the statistician confirmed there was ‘no statistical significance’ associated with the Trust’s figures, primarily due to low sample size, meaning the reported improvements in patient outcomes were ‘entirely unsubstantiated’.
“The very fact that the Stormont health committee held its meeting in SWAH confirms the growing political unease over the consequences arising from the removal of emergency surgery from SWAH,” SOAS spokesperson Donal O’Cofaigh, pictured left, said.
“Our delegation made a strong, evidence-based and comprehensive presentation. They also offered a positive vision of how services could be restored sustainably on the basis of our Roadmap proposals and real ambition.
“We also revealed to the committee that FOI responses obtained by our campaign show that the Public Health Authority had warned the Trust against the inappropriate use of those figures before they did so.”
Donal O’Cofaigh said the comments from the chair and subsequent remarks from the Chief Executive confirmed what campaigners had feared, that there ‘was never any intention’ of returning EGS to SWAH, even as early as 2022.
“This exposes the reality of what has happened to our community,” he said.
“The Trust stopped attempting to recruit surgeons to SWAH in May 2021 and by December 2022 the service became unsustainable and so they ‘temporarily’ removed it blaming a recruitment crisis.
“Despite this, they have repeatedly told our community that the change is temporary and that removing the service has actually made things better.
“Now the community knows that they have been quoting figures that are unsubstantiated.”
