Extra capacity in place for breast screening at Shropshire's hospitals
The trust which runs Shropshire's two main hospitals is putting in place extra capacity for women to have catch-up breast screening sessions after a national NHS IT problem.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the House of Commons last week that hundreds of thousands of women had not been sent invitations for the scans since 2009 because of a computer error.
The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) launched an investigation to find out how many women in the county had been affected.
It is now offering the catch-up sessions to women in Shropshire, aged between 70 and 79, who did not receive their invitations.
They will be in addition to the normal NHS breast screening sessions.
Those who have been affected will be sent letters offering them the opportunity for a catch-up session, with appointments due to start later this month.
Staff at SaTH, which runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital, have been volunteering to work extra hours to ensure that all women who want appointments can be seen within six months.
Nigel Lee, chief operating officer at SaTH, said: “We are putting in place additional screening capacity so that those women who did not receive their invitations due to the national NHS IT problem, can have a catch-up breast screening session by the end of October.
"These appointments will be in addition to our current sessions, so that the normal screening programme is not impacted.
“In order to do this our staff are volunteering to work extra hours, and so I would like to thank them for their commitment towards helping us to achieve this, ensuring that all those women who want a catch up breast screening appointment can be seen as quickly as possible.”
Nationally, the error led to 450,000 people missing out on their final routine breast cancer screening.
It has not been disclosed how many of those were from Shropshire.
Women aged between 50 and 70 are supposed to be invited for a mammogram every three years.
An independent review has been launched into the failure.
Cam Morgan, spokeswoman for Public Health England (PHE), which oversees the screening programme, said: “PHE is 100 percent focused on providing advice and support to the women and their families who were not invited for their final NHS breast screening test.
"We are very clear that the problem was first identified as a national issue in January 2018 following analysis of anomalies in data for the Age X trial.
"We will share all information about PHE’s role and how we work with NHS England and NHS breast screening services with the independent review and therefore we won’t be commenting further.”
The official helpline for those who think they may be affected is 0800 169 2692.
