“I am pleased after many months of highlighting failures and demanding action that the Health Minister finally seems to be responding. This had become inevitable, but is absolutely necessary.
The Minister and his officials have been aware of these findings, yet no action was taken until this week. Assembly Questions I tabled about the performance of the cardiac surgery unit in March remain unanswered twelve weeks later.
It appears to have taken the most recent leaked report and associated publicity for something finally to happen.
Almost a carbon copy of the same inappropriate behaviours that have been reported over the last week was contained in the Royal College of Surgeons report on the cardiothoracic unit back in 2020 under the Minister’s predecessor.
I trust the Minister agrees intervention must be radical and comprehensive. It is essential that any actions tackle head on the management failures issues in the Trust. Alarming and unacceptable as they are, the revelations about the cardiac surgery team are only symptoms of the wider disease at the top of the Belfast Trust.
The multiple failures with capital projects and haemorrhaging of scarce resources also need to be tackled. Yet Belfast Trust management costs totalled £63 million last year, more than the Southern and Western Trusts combined, and over 50% more than for the Department of Health itself.
There needs to be fundamental overhaul of how whistleblowing and complaints are handled by Trust management, and I want to know what annual appraisals and 360 degree feedback for cardiac surgeons have demonstrated, and what actions were taken.
Thankfully patients should be reassured about the actual treatment and outcomes they receive from the RVH cardiac surgery unit. The volume of correspondence I have received from staff well beyond just the Belfast Trust would indicate more widespread problems. What is clear however, is that the Belfast Trust has been at the epicentre of too many unacceptable situations and its leadership has been called into question too often”.