Review of children's heart operations to reopen
A CONTROVERSIAL review of children's cardiac surgery will be reopened, ministers have confirmed.
Proposed reforms, aimed at stopping surgery at some hospitals in order to concentrate expertise in a smaller number of specialist centres, followed recommendations from the inquiry into children's heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1990 and 1995, when up to 35 youngsters died as a result of poor care.
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The Safe and Sustainable review was eventually published in July, and recommended that heart surgery be maintained at Bristol Children's Hospital, as well as at Southampton, Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham and London. This meant the closure of three other units, triggering huge protests.
Bristol's heart surgery unit was not seen as under threat in the review, as it was included in all four options put forward for consultation.
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But now the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has ordered a "full review" of the process.
It follows referrals from some of the councils whose local hospitals faced losing heart surgery, calling for a rethink.
The review will now be reconsidered by an independent panel.
The Department of Health said there were "common themes" in the councils' complaints, which the panel had decided "merit further consideration".
A spokeswoman said: "Following this, the Secretary of State has asked the Independent Reconfiguration Panel to conduct a full review of the proposals for change under the Safe and Sustainable review of congenital heart services. As part of this, the IRP will consider the implications on other services."
Separately, campaign group Save Our Surgery said it had filed for a judicial review against the decision to close a heart unit in Leeds.
The decision also comes as Bristol Children's Hospital faces complaints over the standard of post-operative care and calls from bereaved parents for surgery to be suspended while a probe into recent deaths is carried out.
University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the children's hospital, said it was too early to comment on the rethink.
Speaking in Parliament yesterday, Mr Hunt told MPs: "It's going to be a totally impartial review, it's going to be a very thorough review."
Comments
by swwhag
Wednesday, October 24 2012, 10:29PM
“Concentrating expertise in specialist centres is the right way to go.
Whether Bristol has truly earned the right to be one of those centres remains to be seen. We (the public) need to see its performance data for the end to end care of paediatric cardiac patients from referral through surgery and post operative care and then follow up.
This data needs to be compared with other specialist centres. We need to know what national standards they should be achieving, how Bristol is performing against them now and in comparison with other specialist centres.
We also need to see how capable Bristol is of maintaining and improving performance against these national standards in the future (does it have the resources - people, finance?), and we need to see its future capability compares with the capability of other centres to maintain and improve performance.
Will we get this? Not with the current NHS culture of secrecy and resentment when asked to provide this sort of data. This unfortunate attitude seems particularly entrenched in Bristol.”
by Bristol
Wednesday, October 24 2012, 6:23PM
“Following recent child deaths at Bristol Children's hospital and the previous need for two inquiries, Bristol should face a full independent review of its poor closed door conducts. This should be set as priority, before other children die due to the poor standards of care. All children undergoing heart surgery should receive the highest level of care; this is not currently the case. Bristol has been investigated for its conduct before but has not learnt from the findings. A full independent inquiry will save lives; the only issue is, will this happen soon enough?
The people at the top of the Bristol NHS Trust need to be made publically accountable for their hand in the hospitals poor performance.
Call for Bristol Children's hospital to suspend Operations http://tinyurl.com/9bz5hfa
Heart surgery boy died due to staff shortages http://tinyurl.com/9yj887y
The Bristol Heart babies scandal http://tinyurl.com/9uo83bx
Failure to implement children's heart surgery reforms 'has cost lives'. http://tinyurl.com/9xnvz22
More on this can be found at http://tinyurl.com/9yzq726 follow @bristolinquiry on twitter”
by Trymriverman
Wednesday, October 24 2012, 2:09PM
“This is typical political running of the NHS - seemingly unending re-organisation. With everybody feeling unsettled and managers having to put decisions on the back-burner indefinitely and all concerned slowly losing the will to live. Of course the business consultants do very well from it all!”