Koo Foundation Sun Yat-sen Cancer Center superintendent Andrew Huang (黃達夫) yesterday dismissed mounting criticism over the hospital’s refusal to admit victims of the Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) blast on Saturday, saying the center is a cancer facility, and does not have a burn unit.
“As Taiwan’s first hospital specializing in cancer treatment, the center operates differently from most general hospitals. We are not equipped with cardiology and cardiovascular surgery departments, or the equipment and staff to treat trauma,” Huang said in an open letter published on Chinese-language news Web site ETtoday.
Due to a patient’s right to receive prompt medical care, Huang said the center finds it unacceptable when a patient is sent to a hospital not outfitted to deal with emergencies, as treatment is inevitably delayed so that the patient can be transferred to another medical institution with the required equipment and specialists.
Huang’s letter came days after New Taipei City Hospital surgeon Hung Hao-yun (洪浩雲) accused the center — which is the hospital closest to the Formosa Fun Coast water park — of turning its back on the nearly 500 blast victims.
“Even one hospital without a plastic surgery department accepted more than 10 victims with major burns, with many of its staff, who were not on call that night, rushing to treat the accident victims,” Hung said on Facebook on Sunday.
“I did not hear anyone say anything stupid like: ‘We do not have plastic surgeons or burn wards, if we take in patients and their situations worsen, we could take the blame,’” Hung said.
Huang said that when the cancer center was founded in 1990, he and then-superintendent Sung Juei-low (宋瑞樓) explained to nearby borough wardens and police departments that the hospital did not have the ability to handle a significant volume of emergencies, as its emergency room was designed only for cancer patients.
“If we open our emergency room to patients whose problems are beyond our medical team’s capabilities and fail to treat them properly, we would be violating JCI’s most-emphasized principle of ensuring patient safety,” he said.
When asked for comment, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — a former trauma surgeon at National Taiwan University Hospital — said given that as the cancer center does not normally accept burn cases, they would eventually be transferred to another medical facility.
“It is better for patients to be sent to where they are supposed to be in the first place,” Ko said.
However, the Taiwan Medical Alliance for Labor Justice and Patient Safety described the center’s response as “turning down emergency patients on a technicality.”
“We urge the Ministry of Health and Welfare to re-evaluate the cancer center’s status,” the alliance said.
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