New legal challenge launched over children's heart surgery (From The Northern Echo)
For details on how to contact our editorial and commercial departments, click here
New legal challenge launched over children's heart surgery
2:00am Monday 11th February 2013 in News
By Dani Webb, Chief Reporter (South Durham)
A NEW legal challenge begins today (Monday, February 11) over proposals to change the provision of children's heart surgery across England.
The controversial plans involve stopping operations at three hospitals, including Leeds General Infirmary.
Children in the area will instead have to travel to the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle, or Liverpool's Alder Hay Hospital for surgery.
Campaign group Save Our Surgery (SOS) is seeking a judicial review to keep children's cardiac surgery at Leeds and argues the consultation process was unfair.
If SOS wins its action, the proposed changes could be affected and this could put a question mark over the future of children's heart surgery in Newcastle.
The two other units currently facing closure are at Glenfield Hospital, in Leicester and London's Royal Brompton, which lost its own application for a judicial review last year.
The Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts (JCPCT) decided care should be concentrated at fewer, larger sites to improve standards and chose units at Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Southampton and two London centres.
But opposition from patients in other parts of the country led to a second review of services by the Independent Reconfiguration Panel (IRP), which advises the NHS.
That ongoing review – as well as this legal challenge – is fuelling uncertainty at the Freeman Hospital, where staff had thought the battle had been won.
Sharon Cheng, from SOS, said: “Taking legal action has always been our last resort option, pursued only after all other appeals to review the decision were rejected by the JCPCT.
“At the end of the day, this is about protecting the lives of children and this is why we believe that the challenges to NHS officials should be heard.
The former national clinical director for heart disease and stroke, Sir Roger Boyle, who was one of the experts advising the review, says the NHS made the right decision and that Leeds General Infirmary would continue to play a vital role providing cardiology services to children.
In 2011, more than 600,000 people from across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire signed a petition supporting the children's heart unit at Leeds General Infirmary.
Medical royal colleges and national charities have warned that further delay to reform will put children's lives at additional risk.
More NHS & Health News
- Nursing union criticises new threat to privatise community services
- Mock clinical trial highlights benefits of trying new drugs or treatment
- Public consultation over planned hospital changes gets under way
- Campaign tells patients that it is 'OK to ask' about clinical trials
- Maggie's Cancer Support comes to the North-East
- Ex-footballer urges everyone to bring dementia out into the open
- Poster girls promote NHS careers
- Study aims to discover whether special insoles can help MS patients walk
- Genetic medicine unit now seeing 800 new cases a year in bid to prevent inherited cancers
- Experts back plan to move hospital services from Hartlepool to Stockton
