Patients 'would refuse treatment' if centre moves

More than 200 people have told health bosses they would choose not to have specialist treatment if a cancer centre relocates.

They were responding to a consultation on proposals to move Mount Vernon Cancer Centre from Northwood to Watford.

The new facility would form part of the planned rebuild of Watford General Hospital.

One patient said the last thing people with cancer needed was difficulty in accessing treatment.

Mount Vernon Cancer Centre offers care to about 13,000 people across the region.

But health bosses say modern cancer care requires other facilities, such as accident and emergency and critical care, to be available on the same site.

The Northwood campus has no such facilities so the plan is to move the cancer centre to Watford General Hospital, as part of its rebuild project.

A two-month consultation exercise revealed nearly half of the 2,222 respondents supported the move, while 42% opposed it.

A total of 12% (267 people) said they would "choose not to have specialist treatment if it meant travelling to Watford General Hospital".

A report on the consultation said the figure should be "interpreted with care" as it was a "hypothetical question about a proposed future service model".

Lilian Weimer, who underwent radiotherapy at Mount Vernon, said she could not understand the rationale behind the move as the lack of emergency facilities would affect every service offered at the hospital, not just cancer care.

She added that some patients would not find it easy to travel to Watford and "the last thing a chemotherapy patient needs is any kind of additional difficulty accessing treatment".

A former member of staff told the BBC: "Mount Vernon serves a lot of patients from the borough of Hillingdon and Buckinghamshire, and quite a bit further for rarer cancers, who would find it impossible to get to Watford General Hospital by car, and could not park if they did bring a car."

Matthew Coats, chief executive of West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "Expanding the Watford General scheme to include Mount Vernon Cancer Centre would be a major step forward in delivering both a world class cancer centre and a state-of-the-art hospital, which would benefit patients, our communities and our brilliant staff."

The NHS is actively trying to rationalise its estate by creating large regional hubs of health services, which would cut running costs and streamline services.

Inevitably, some patients will end up travelling further to what some see as overwhelming and impersonal megasites.

Those who welcome the change to Mount Vernon will have to wait before it becomes a reality - the rebuild of Watford General will not be finished until at least 2038.

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