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Around 400 people took time out to attend last evenings meeting on the future of Daisy Hill Hospital. The meeting at the Canal Court Hotel in Newry saw emotions running high with members of the audience telling very personal stories of their experiences with the level of services at the Southern Trust hospitals.
Dr Conor Patterson Chair of the Daisy Hill Future group chaired the proceedings with a panel consisting of Professor Mark Taylor, Chair of Review of General Surgery NI; Dr Maria O'Kane, Chief Executive, Southern Health and Social Care Trust; Kevin McElvanna, Consultant General Surgeon; Amie Nelson, Head of General Surgery, SHSCT; Adrian Neill, Consultant General Surgeon, Clinical Director and Dr Stephen Austin, Medical Director, SHSCT.
Speaking first was Dr Mario O'Kane, CEO, Southern Trust who spoke about her enthusiasm on the proposed developments at Daisy Hill Dr O'Kane said "We're very proud of what we do and I feel very priviledged to be able to lead an organisation that is as committed to its community as Daisy Hill is and certainly the rest of the Southern Trust is.
"Part of the aspiration behind all of this is not just about providing really excellent care for people who present in an emergency, but also to help us develop the capacity to address all of those thousands of people who are on waiting lists for cancer surgeries, diagnostics, all of the areas that challenge people on a daily basis.
"We do this in the context of being an extremely busy unit on the Daisy Hill site. Last year we delivered over two thousand babies in Daisy Hill. We had more than 56.000 emergency department attendances, so every time I hear something about us not needing an emergency department in Daisy Hill, my first question always is where are those 56,000 patients going to go because we know how presurised the health service in Northern Ireland is these days, and without Daisy Hill the health service in Northern Ireland falls over. I can't put it any more bluntly than that. I'm saying that by way of reassuring people that we are needed more than ever at this point in time."
"We admit more than 8000 patients every year and last year undertook more than 83,000 diagnostic interventions on the Daisy Hill site"
Dr O'Kane spoke about the Council's Monaghan Row site "We're delighted about the prospect of acquiring Monaghan Row (Current Council Office location) over the next number of weeks hopefully and we have started to develop that site to expand the footprint of Daisy Hill and that should allow us to do even more of what we do currently." she said.
Professor Mark Taylor "I would love there still to be that good old fashioned General Surgeon that could do all things for all people at all times. The difficulty is that we don't have those people any more, and because general surgery has changed we now have the sub specialist, so the colorectal person will operate on your bowel and try not to give you a stoma. I will operate, as an upper GI surgeon on your perforated bowel and definitely give you a stoma. And I think therein lies the difficulty. Do you want the surgeon that has done five laparotomies in a month doing your emergency operation or do you want the surgeon that's doing that every week?"
Prof Taylor continued "The other thing is we have now 122,000 people in Northern Ireland waiting for elective and day case surgery. That's a shame. That's one in four of our population and many in this room will be in that situation as well. We have 18 buildings in Northern Ireland and at one stage all 18 were independent, stand-alone hospitals that had the same pride about them as you have today about Daisy Hill, and with successive reviews things have had to change, and at this present time change does have to happen because if we resist that change what happens is collapse and we have seen it here in Daisy Hill, we've seen it in the South West Acute Hospital, it is only a matter of time before we see it in other specialties in other hospitals in Northern Ireland and so there is a choice to make. The choice is that we do nothing and let that collapse continue or that we embrace change."
The Future of Daisy Hill has never been better
Speaking about the proposed elective overnight stay centre at the hospital Professor Taylor said "We do want to reduce the elective waiting times. We want to have more timely care, you want more timely care. We have to have sustainable staffing models and improve our surgical training. Our trainees are crying out for training. These overnight stay centres will be maximum training opportunities and with training opportunities comes all that come with it and that is, the tourism, the business side of things, people coming to stay overnight and work in the overnight stay centres. All of that is why my final words are The future of Daisy Hill has never been better."
At this point of the proceedings Francis Gallagher, Daisy Hill Hospital Action Group complained the meeting was like "death by powerpoint" and that almost an hour into proceedings members of the audience still hadn't got a chance to get their points across. Another woman also conveyed her anger.
Next to speak was Kevin McElvanna, Consultant General Surgeon who spoke on emergency general surgery and then the audience got a chance to speak.
This is the first of a series of articles on last nights meeting.
