Together we have made a real difference and “Substantive changes” have been made to proposals.

The response to the consultation and final report from NHS England has been published.

The Trustees of the Sunrise Appeal met last week and were delighted to have confirmation from consultants at the centre that, as a result of our campaign, the threat of patients from Cornwall and the IOS being moved out of county for treatment has been removed.

In the document NHS England state:

“A total of 11,542 online responses to the consultation were received, as well as 675 responses submitted in other formats”. “The majority  (90%) of the online survey responses were from the South West” Most of those responses were from Cornwall.

“As a result of the concerns expressed,  that many more people would need to travel further for radiotherapy treatment, NHS England has made a number of significant changes to the proposals. The changes place emphasis on securing improvements through greater collaboration and care protocol standardisation between centres and clinical teams.

Taken together, these changes mean that:

• People requiring radical radiotherapy for the treatment of a less common cancer can continue to be treated locally.
• Clinical teams will be able to maintain their involvement in a broad range of subspecialist cancer treatments, therefore maintaining skillset and expertise.
• Local clinical teams within the Network will be empowered to improve services.“

“The proposals no longer require the centralisation of radical radiotherapy treatment for the less common cancers”

“It is acknowledged that, in some areas, Networks may need to invest in IT infrastructure to reap all the benefits of greater partnership working. NHS England is committed to supporting Networks achieve this”

“The proposed working arrangements of the subspecialist teams and the opportunities for partnership working between centres have been substantially clarified and amended so that the current radiotherapy pathways will be unchanged as a result of implementing the Service Specifications. This means that the way patients access radiotherapy care and treatment will be unchanged (e.g. travel).”

The Sunrise Appeal remains committed to raising funds to ensure that the Sunrise Centre maintains a gold standard status into the future.

………. and finally a quote from Dr John McGrane, Consultant Clinical Oncologist at The Sunrise Centre.

“We are delighted that the updated NHS England proposals mean that patients continue to be treated locally here in Cornwall. We are grateful to the people who responded to the consultation in their thousands, making their views heard, that they want to continue to have high quality radiotherapy treatment locally”

*all in italics are quotes from the Response to Consultation document*