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| Tim Farron and team: vascular services decision “ludicrous” |
Despite a major campaign to keep them, campaigners have lost the battle to keep vascular health services in
Morecambe Bay.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced yesterday that they would
move to three regional sites, meaning the Royal Lancaster Infirmary will no longer offer on-site support for people suffering with circulatory problems – a decision Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron described as “ludicrous”, but one which both local Tory MPs appear to have accepted, although Lancaster MP Eric Ollerenshaw supported the campaign to retain them.
People needing such services – often after heart
attacks and strokes – will now have to travel to Carlisle, Preston or
Blackburn, with the three sites serving the whole of Cumbria and Lancashire, plus parts of Greater Manchester and South West Scotland.
“There is a strong clinical case for the concentration
of vascular services in Cumbria and Lancashire at three sites,” said Mr Farron in repsonse to the announcement, “but is
it not ludicrous that the three that have been chosen are so
geographically located that one is virtually on the Scottish border,
then there is a gap of almost 100 miles, and then there are two that
are nine miles apart?
“Does not that leave south Cumbria and north
Lancashire dangerously under-provided for? Given the current
difficulties, shall we say, at Morecambe Bay, does not robbing Morecambe Bay of those skills and that expertise make a difficult situation potentially even worse?”
But Jeremy Hunt was unrepentant. “I know that my honorable Friend has campaigned, rightly,
to represent the concerns of his constituents about the extra travel
that they will have to undertake,” he responded. “I would like to reassure him that we
considered that issue very carefully.
“The Independent Reconfiguration
Panel recognises that travel is a consideration, but also believes that
for his constituents, even for the people who have to travel further,
there will be better clinical outcomes for specialist vascular surgery,” he argued. “We are talking about not routine surgery, diagnosis or rehabilitation
work but conditions such as aneurysms and carotid artery disease which
require specialist care. Patients can get much better help if that is
concentrated in specialist centres.
“As to why
those particular centres were chosen, it was a genuinely difficult
decision. There is a bigger concentration of population in the south of
the region and there is also more social deprivation and more unmet
need. I know it was a difficult decision, but it was decided that that
would be best for the 2.8 million people in the area and also better for
my honorable Friend’s constituents.”
“I am completely dismayed by this decision and
outraged by the total disregard shown to rural communities in South
Cumbria and North Lancashire,” Mr Farron says.
“This decision to move vascular services from Morecambe Bay will have dangerous consequences.
“This decision to move vascular services from Morecambe Bay will
have dangerous consequences. Our vascular services unit has not only
developed a local reputation but also a national one and removing these
services hugely undermines the Trust’s efforts to recover. I am
incredibly disappointed that the health ministers have let us down.”
“I am incredibly disappointed that the health ministers have let us down.”
Barrow and Furness MP John Woodcock feels Mr Hunt had not done enough to reassure patients.
: “Families from across South Cumbria who rely on the
life-saving specialist vascular services provided at Royal Lancaster
Infirmary will be dismayed by the government’s decision to make them to
travel all the way to Preston, Blackburn or Carlisle to get treatment.
“The medical evidence we presented was clear and the secretary of
state has not done nearly enough to show that that vascular patients
will not be put at risk by his very disappointing decision.”
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, campaigned against the move but its legal bid to stop services being moved was rejected earlier this year.
Tim Farron obviously carries an enormous amount of weight in the coalition. Despite fighting the corner of South Lakes he is constantly ignored. He's right of course but he is as culpable as his Tory colleagues Ollerenshaw and Morris in not fighting this decision and making them see sense.
It now opens the doors for the closure of A&E in Lancaster as well other services, which despite what others say will also inevitably on the cards in the next two years. If Lancaster was good enough and was prepared to fight it would keep its services at the expense of others, sadly they don't, so it won't.