Dr. Michael McCarthy:

This is a story that I hear too often. If there is no dedicated funding put into a strategy and if the NCP is not there to implement that strategy nationally then it is likely services will decline over time. A good model for these types of situations is a rapid access clinic. We have these established for several different types of cancer.

An example from Galway is a model for these types of situations where, if a patient sees their GP and there is any concern he or she might have lung cancer they can get an appointment to see a specialist consultant within a few weeks. The patient can attend on that and get a bronchoscope, CT scan, an ultrasound or whatever type of diagnostic that may be needed to make an assessment as to whether somebody had cancer or not. Those results automatically go on to the lung cancer multidisciplinary team, MDT, to be discussed with the whole team of consultants, surgery, meta-oncology, radiotherapy and respiratory. If there is a finding of cancer and treatment is required the patient is automatically then booked into what we call a joint thoracic clinic, which is an outpatient clinic, where there are medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgeons and all the people who would need to be there to make decisions for the treatment plan. The whole thing works in a very smooth way so for anybody where there is a suspicion of lung cancer, we have a very clear model of how we should deal with that.

There are also rapid access clinics for prostate cancer. It would be good to see similar clinics set up into the future to prevent things like this happening. Centralised care with dedicated resources where a GP, whether in Buncrana or Tipperary, knows if they are worried about a gastrointestinal, GI, cancer they can send the patient to a GI rapid access clinic, for example. That is a good model of care we should look to develop.