RADIOTHERAPY SERVICES for cancer patients in the southeast are facing disruption because of a dispute between the HSE and management at the Whitfield Clinic in Waterford.
The cancer centre in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC) at Whitfield has had a service-level agreement with the HSE to provide radiotherapy treatment for public patients in Waterford since 2007.
The HSE plans to provide radiotherapy at Whitfield at least until the availability of a centre at Waterford Regional Hospital (WRH), expected by 2014. That centre is one of eight earmarked under the HSE’s National Cancer Control Programme.
However, the most recent agreement for treatment at Whitfield ended on December 31st last, and efforts to negotiate a new contract have so far been unsuccessful.
In a letter to HSE management last Thursday, Whitfield said removal of standard radiotherapy and intensity modulated radiation therapy, a more advanced mode of high-precision radiotherapy, is planned from May 1st.
Nearly 800 patients from counties Waterford, Tipperary, Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford receive radiotherapy at Whitfield, and about 80 per cent of these, some 600 individuals, are HSE patients.
UPMC said yesterday that services would not be withdrawn from existing patients, but the dispute would affect the treatment of new cases. It also said private patients would not be affected.
In a statement yesterday, UPMC “regrettably” said “this decision was made after 15 months of negotiations with the HSE and the National Cancer Control Programme. We have continued to provide a service in 2010 without a contract, and the failure to meet any of the agreed deadlines and continued payment issues have forced us to reluctantly take this decision,” it read.
A UPMC spokesman said it had had problems with payments since August 2008, and that the centre “still hasn’t had a draft contract or a response” after submission of “reduced prices” in quotations.
The HSE said “there were discussions between the HSE and the Whitfield Clinic earlier this year and [that] payments by account, on agreement, continue to be made to the clinic”. It said part of ongoing discussions “involves agreeing appropriate fee levels for care received”.
WRH clinical director Dr Rob Landers said: “It is very unfair to put patients in the middle of negotiations which should take place in a boardroom rather than on the public airwaves. Sending a letter to the HSE on the eve of a bank holiday weekend threatening the withdrawal of services within a few weeks and expecting a reply on what is a complex matter by the following Wednesday, and going public on it, is like putting a gun to the HSE’s head.”
