Palliative Medicine

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Dear Western Health and Social Care Trust (Northern Ireland),

Question1:
I have been looking at outpatient statistics on the NISRA website, and i am curious about the statistics given on Palliative medicine.
There has been a regional fall off in the number of outpatient attendance of approximately 44% in the past 3 years. However there has been a fall off by 75% in the same period in the Western Trust.
This pall off is especially focused in the Omagh and SWAH outpatient clinics
Omagh- has fall off of 90% in the 3 years, while
SWAH - has had a fall off of 93% in the same 3 years.
Can you explain this huge fall in patients.

Question2:
Can you define "palliative medicine" as it refer to the outpatient statistics.

Question3:
What in the Western Trust is meant by a "Life Limiting Condition?"

Yours faithfully,

helen hamill

FOI Request, Western Health and Social Care Trust (Northern Ireland)

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Kind Regards

Freedom of Information Office
Western Health & Social Care Trust
Email: [Western Health and Social Care Trust (Northern Ireland) request email]

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FOI Request, Western Health and Social Care Trust (Northern Ireland)

This e-mail is covered by the disclaimer found at the end of the message.

Dear Ms Hamill

We refer to your email which was received by the Trust on 22 October 2019.

This appears to be follow-up queries relating to information previously released by the Trust in response to your Freedom of Information (FOI) requests (our refs.: FOI/19/149, FOI/19/150, FOI/19/199 and FOI/19/291).

We would advise that, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 you have a right to request a copy of any 'recorded information' held by the Trust and this will be provided to you unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Your request can be in the form of a question, but the Trust does not have to answer any question that would mean creating new information or giving an opinion, comment or judgment that is not already recorded or held in a document or on a Trust system.

Having considered your email and discussed this with the relevant Service directorate it is the Trust view that this is not a valid FOI request for further recorded information but rather questions about information already provided by the Trust or available elsewhere (i.e. on the NISRA website). Although this does not require a response under the FOI Act, the service have advised that they are happy to link with you directly (under normal course of business) and provide any necessary clarification or explanation about the Trust data. The service area are best placed to clarify how the data is captured and reported by the Trust and also explain any terminology used.

If you are happy with this approach, can we ask that you can provide a separate email address and/or other contact details so that a service manager can contact you to discuss this matter? As the specific queries in your email relate to 'Palliative Medicine', you can provide your personal contact details by contacting the office of the Director of Primary Care and Older People's (PCOP) Services at Trust Headquarters on 028 7161 1194. These will be passed to the relevant service manager who will then contact you directly to discuss this matter.

We hope this is helpful and allows you to obtain the necessary clarification.

Yours sincerely

Freedom of Information Office
Western Health and Social Care Trust

Freedom of Information: If you are unhappy as to how this request has been handled, you have the right to seek a review within the Trust in the first instance. You should write to the FOI Office, Administration Building, Altnagelvin Hospital, Glenshane Road, Londonderry BT47 6SB ([Western Health and Social Care Trust (Northern Ireland) request email]) within two months of the date of this response and your complaint will be considered and a response provided, usually within 20 working days of receipt.

If, after receiving a response, you remain unhappy, you can refer your complaint to the Information Commissioner at The Information Commissioner’s office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. It is important to note that if you refer any matter to the Information Commissioner, you will need to show evidence of having gone through the Trust’s internal review procedure to try to resolve the matter with the Trust in the first instance.

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