OVER 170 DOCTORS in Co Donegal are seeking an “urgent meeting” with the Health Minister over a decision to overlook Letterkenny University Hospital at the site for a new surgical hub in the North West.

HSE management in the North West are understood to have chosen Sligo University Hospital as the preferred option for a new surgical hub for the region.

Surgical hubs deliver up to 10,000 day case surgeries and minor procedures annually.

A letter signed by 171 doctors in Donegal and address to Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has said that “no consideration” was given to placing the hub in Letterkenny and that regional management “dismissed a business case for this”.

The letter stated that population and geography concerns were given as the primary reasons for choosing Sligo over Letterkenny.

However, the letter states that the “population numbers don’t stack up” and that some people in rural north Donegal would face a five-hour round trip to reach Sligo, while “no patient would be more than 90 minutes from a surgical hub” if it were placed in Letterkenny.

And while an ambulatory care centre has been proposed for Letterkenny, the letter states that this proposal “lacks ring-fenced funding, defined scope, staffing allocations, and delivery timeline associated with the surgical hub model”.

“What other population base in Ireland is expected to travel five hours to access such care?” asks the letter.

Speaking this morning to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Dr Padraig McGuinness, a GP based on the Fanad Peninsula, said the letter “points to the seriousness of the situation”.

“I have two patients who are elderly and frail – they can’t travel to Sligo for the lighted joint injections or eye injections,” said McGuinness.

“I have two patients who are now going blind from macular degeneration because they can’t make the journey to Sligo, that’s the health inequality at its most stark.

McGuinness added that a surgical hub in Donegal could be delivered within two years.

“We won’t accept anything else in Donegal except fair access to health care, and that’s a surgical hub,” said McGuinness.

“Our understanding is a decision has been made regionally by the HSE and has been passed up the line,” said McGuinness.

“We’re asking the Minister to go back and ask them to look at the business case for both hospitals.

“We’re asking her to make the decision that will result in our patients in Donegal, and the patients in Sligo and Leitrim, all having access to a surgical hub within an appropriate, commutable distance.”

Carroll MacNeill visited Letterkenny hospital last month.

McGuinness said the surgical team asked to meet the minister but “her diary didn’t allow for this”.

McGuinness added that she was presented with a dossier of evidence from the surgical team in Letterkenny.

“We haven’t heard anything back from her yet,” said McGuinness, “but we’re hoping that the minister will meet us and discuss this evidence with us and allow Donegal to get a surgical hub.”

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin TD for Donegal Pádraig Mac Lochlainn described the decision to overlook Letterkenny as “outrageous” and “typical of the neglect that the people of Donegal have faced for too long”.  

“Letterkenny University Hospital services a much larger population and a much higher number of patients than Sligo University Hospital,” he added.

“The people of Donegal will not accept second best anymore when it comes to our healthcare.”

His party colleague Pearse Doherty said a decision to locate the surgical hub in Sligo would be a “disaster for our major Donegal hospital”.

“We need to start to reverse the years of neglect,” said Doherty.

“There must be a surgical hub located in Donegal and it must happen as soon as possible.”