FAQs

• There is limited support infrastructure on the existing site which limits the team’s ability to deliver complex oncology care. 
• Some newer treatments and research trials have high levels of toxicity. Without services such as high dependency or intensive care, patients will not have access to the latest treatments. Immunotherapies and other cancer treatments are becoming increasingly complex and there are already treatments that can’t take place at MVCC – this gap will increase in future. 
• As people live longer, more people with cancer are also living with other illnesses or conditions which require treatment alongside their cancer treatment. This cannot be done at MVCC.
• Staff have done a good job, despite the conditions, in providing high quality treatment and ensuring patient safety. Patient feedback regularly shows that most patients are happy with the services they receive. However, a more permanent solution needs to be found to ensure the sustainability of the services in the long term.
• Staff want to be able to treat more complex patients to develop their skills and become experts in their field and there is a risk that Mount Vernon will not be able to recruit and retain staff if a long term solution is not agreed.
• We want to organise services in ways that provide the best modern care for patients, including access to research trials and new technology and treatments, from good quality facilities.

No – the Programme Board honestly do not know what the recommendations will be in December and in March. Logically it makes sense that moving the hospital a long way will not be an option.

Yes – as long as we can get together the capital money we will need.

Definitely not. There are no plans to move any patients to Central London unless they would need to go there anyway. In fact, UCLH would like to explore the possibility of some patients currently being treated in central London, being treated at Mount Vernon instead, if the right clinical facilities were available.

The current buildings are in a poor condition, with a significant backlog of maintenance issues. It is more cost effective to build a new hospital than bring the current buildings up to the necessary standard to provide safe care in a suitable environment. 

Simply improving the current buildings will not solve clinical issues such as a lack of intensive care beds.

Mount Vernon needs access to a very small number of intensive care beds. Whilst most patients will not require intensive or critical care, it needs to be available in order for clinicians to be able to offer innovative, complex and rarer treatments. 

To build such a small intensive care unit would not be safe. It would be extremely difficult to staff and very expensive to run which would divert resources from elsewhere.

Satellite radiotherapy in North Hertfordshire or South Bedfordshire could be considered in most options. However, in the ambulatory hub option, it is likely to be necessary for the satellite radiotherapy centre and ambulatory hub to be on the same site, and the do minimum option may mean a new satellite radiotherapy service is developed only as the service moves off the MVCC site as the service is not large enough to spread across three sites.

• Full replacement and focussed development of a comprehensive Cancer Centre Hub better enables structured delivery of a networked model of care.  The choice of any ambulatory ‘spokes’ of this service can then be assessed based on population need, not a legacy location, and delivered in partnership with local referring hospitals.
• Full replacement, consolidation and clinical adjacencies ensures the clinical infrastructure to enable repatriation of specialist cancer services work from central London (notably UCLH)
• Access to medical and surgical specialty support benefits the full range of cancer care – inpatient and outpatient, and ensures certain patient groups are not disadvantaged. The increasing complexity of cancer care alongside the increasing requirement to manage cancer patients with additional co-morbidities make these clinical adjacencies increasingly critical to a specialist cancer centre.
• Critical mass and the specialist cancer workforce – delivery of the future clinical model hinges on the specialist cancer workforce; ensuring a model which is attractive to staff in terms of the clinical specialism, experience, training and development and research opportunities is key. Education and training opportunities are particularly enhanced by a comprehensive Cancer Centre hub.  In addition, to ensure it is possible to have the full range of very specialist multi-professional staff supporting complex cancer pathways, a certain size of service is needed.  
• Future-proofing – consolidation of services on a site adjacent to and connected to acute hospital facilities gives the best opportunity to future proof the service to respond to the as yet unknown future requirements of specialist cancer care.

At the moment we are developing options. As part of this we are working with local Integrated Care Systems, CCGs, other providers and Cancer Alliances, to understand the needs of the large population Mount Vernon cancer services serve, any variations in outcomes, access issues and more, as well as working on the feasibility of potential options.

Alongside this we need to agree how the new cancer centre will be paid for and where the money will come from. This capital funding is critical to moving the work forward.

Once we know this, we will be looking to run a formal 12-week public consultation. Only once the feedback from public consultation has been fully considered can a final decision be made. We are hoping the consultation will begin in the 2021/22 year so that a decision can be made in the first half of 2022.

If your question isn't answered here, you can submit your question here: https://mvccreview.nhs.uk/about-the-review2