Breastcheck has moved to allay fears over growing concerns over waiting lists for its services.
Donegal Action for Cancer Care yesterday wrote to Breastcheck and the National Screening Service to seek clarity over reports that 9,000 women were on the waiting list for screening appointments.
Breastcheck has said this figure is not accurate but suggested the figure has reduced to 6,000.
The following is the reply issued by Breastcheck to clarify those concerns.
A spoksperson said “BreastCheck, like every other health service, has been affected by COVID-19. We have lost nearly a year of screening time. This means appointments in this screening round (where we invite you for screening once every 2 years) are delayed by up to a year.
“If you were due to be screened in 2020, we are aiming to invite you in 2021.
“If you were due to be screened in 2021, we will now aim to invite you in 2022.
“The effect of this is that appointments in this two-year screening round are delayed by up to a year. For a period of time, Ireland will be more in line with England, which screens women every three years. BreastCheck is working hard to return to screening women every two years as soon as possible.
“I would like firstly to emphasise the ways in which we are working to increase capacity:
· Our staff vaccination programme is complete – maximising the number of patient-facing staff available.
· We have funded a new text message appointment system to maximise uptake.
· We have funded a large-scale communications campaign running which informs women the action they can take to ensure every appointment slot is filled – helping us maximise capacity.
· We have funded three new, fully kitted out BreastCheck mobile units, which will have the effect of increasing capacity.
· We are actively recruiting staff across the programmes, while noting that staff recruitment remains a global challenge in certain specialities.
· Our work in diagnosing and treating high risk women during the height of the pandemic served to increase access to treatment pathways for women now coming through screening to assessment. We are studying the rebalancing effect of this work on the reduction in the number of well women being screened during that period, and the effect on cancer diagnosis. This study will take some time to complete.
· We have funded a large-scale communications campaign running which informs women the action they can take to ensure every appointment slot is filled – helping us maximise capacity.
“As we discussed at our recent meeting, an additional mobile unit was supplied to Donegal for seven weeks in September and October this year, in order to increase the rate at which we are inviting women in Donegal.
“Unfortunately, we received an unprecedented amount of cancellations for the Donegal Town mobile unit. This large rate of non-attendance meant we are not able to make best use of the extra resources secured to screen women in Donegal during COVID-19.
“Despite this, we can report that we have decreased the number of women awaiting screening appointments in Donegal, since screening restarted in October 2020. Our numbers awaiting screening in Donegal has reduced from c7,000 to c6,000 women in that period. The figure reported of 9000 is not therefore correct.
“We regret to say that BreastCheck does not currently have a site for screening in Buncrana, therefore eligible women from this area are invited to attend for their breast screening in the Letterkenny or Donegal Town mobile unit. At our recent meeting we discussed with you the difficulties we have had with site access. Therefore, we do not have a date for when the mobile unit will return to this area.
“We provide updates on breast screening on www.breastcheck.ie. Women can also contact us on info@breastcheck.ie or Freephone 1800 45 45 55.
With thanks NSS Communications National Screening Service.”
