Concerns about endoscopy services sparks call for action

Concerns about endoscopy services sparks call for action

10 April 2024

HOSPITAL campaigners are seeking a meeting with senior health chiefs to discuss two crucial issues impacting on local patients.

The Down Community Health Committee is keen to speak with South Eastern Trust representatives to discuss concerns around the future of endoscopy services at the Downe Hospital and ambulance turnaround times at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald.

Both issues were discussed at the campaign group’s meeting on Monday night when concerns were expressed that plans to centralise the cleaning of specialist diagnostic equipment used in the award-winning bowel screening day procedure unit at the Downpatrick hospital could undermine its long term future.

Staff have raised “serious concerns” at plans to reduce capacity at the unit and warned it could lead to longer waiting lists, but the South Eastern Trust — which is responsible for the service — insists the bowel screening service will continue to be provided.

Two women highlighted the importance of having access to a local bowel screening service during Monday night’s meeting and said the Downe endoscopy service must remain.

Ciara Burns said removing the service out of Downpatrick would be “absolutely devastating and horrendous”.

She said some of her family members use the day procedure unit and she was annoyed to read about proposed changes to it.

“My family was so incensed when we read about the service last week that we were going to stage a protest at the hospital,” she told the meeting.

“We are livid about this and my family also requires other hospital services as well. Our services are so lacking at the minute that its terrifying.”

Claire Keenan, who had bowel cancer during Covid, had a colonoscopy at the Downe Hospital unit where a nurse discovered a polyp that led to subsequent surgery.

She had yearly colonoscopies but revealed she has been informed that they will now take place every two years.

“I am fearful that if they start with the endoscopy service we could lose others from the Downe. We have so many people going to the Ulster Hospital because services have been lost from Downpatrick,” said Ms Keenan.

“I have been treated in the Downe so many times and the service is very good. We have a beautiful big hospital there, so why are they not using it more and taking in new doctors?”

Ms Keenan added: “It is really annoying me this has happened and all the money that is spent up there. So much more could be done at the Downe. If we let them do this to endoscopy services, they will just keep doing it and move more and more services and it will be us in the rural areas that are affected.”

Health committee chairman Eamonn McGrady said many people had become aware of the endoscopy service and feared that it could be undermined.

He thanked Ciara and Claire for their contributions and sharing the importance of the service at the Downe to them.

“It can all sound very remote when you are presented with documents and statistics and factual statements about things we are not qualified to comment on about medical care, but the truth is, what the whole campaign in this community is focused on is what ordinary people in this area like ourselves that should be reasonably provided here,” the chairman continued.

“They keep telling us they want us to support ‘transformation’, but they can’t tell us what it means. Just give us basic decent services that everybody should be entitled to.”

South Down MP Chris Hazzard, who last week raised concerns about the endoscopy service, said he was contacted by concerned staff members and fears the endoscopy change is the “first of the salami slicing of services that we have seen in previous years.”

He continued: “Conversations have begun with management around the service, specifically the decontamination and cleansing of utensils with the service centralised to the Ulster Hospital.

“The South Eastern Trust has come back to me and, as always, it seems embarrassed and annoyed that you find out something about a change that is taking place and you have the audacity to ask questions.”

Mr Hazzard confirmed he is seeking further clarification on the endoscopy service.

“The health trust says there are no service changes, but it is having conversations with staff involved. My fear, which is shared by others, is that the centralisation of the decontamination unit to the Ulster Hospital is the first undermining of this service,” he said.

“Staff working in this unit believe it will lead to lengthy waiting times and complications if the service is not provided on site. The service is there at the minute and does a first class job, as do the staff.”

South Down MLA Colin McGrath said he is unhappy at the rationalisation of the endoscopy cleansing service and described it as a further example of the health service undertaking rationalisation to deliver efficiencies. 

“This is not how a health service should be run,” he declared.

“This service is run by an accredited team in an accredited centre, something the other locations do not have and it seems unusual to close the gold standard service and locate it in the bronze standard sites.”

Mr McGrath said while the endoscopy service will continue, with staff offered other roles on the Downe site, it does feel like a further cut to a hospital that has so much more to offer.

He added: “When we hear about efficiencies, we always fear that it’s our services which are going to lose out.”