04.02.13
Children’s heart surgery hearing at High Court next week
The Judicial Review case challenging the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts’ (JCPCT) decision to close the Leeds Children’s Heart Surgery Unit as part of the paediatric heart surgery reconfiguration is set to be heard in the High Court on February 11 and 12.
The case has been brought by local campaign group Save Our Surgery (SOS), which disputes the legality of the decision. It says there was lack of transparency on the part of the joint committee, and questions how the ‘Safe and Sustainable’ review and quality assessment were conducted and the basis on which closure decisions were made.
The campaigners say the Leeds unit offers “significant advantages” that have been either overlooked or downgraded in the review process. Sharon Cheng of Save Our Surgery 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. However, having been forced to take this route, we believe that our arguments will clearly show that the JCPCT’s Review process was flawed and that they are not acting in the best interests of children.
“We understand and agree with the need to consolidate children’s heart surgery services into fewer centres of excellence. However, closing Leeds and forcing families to travel for hours makes no sense. Leeds has routinely been rated as excellent and has all the facilities needed by critically ill children and their families on one site.
“At the end of the day, this is about protecting the lives of children and this is why we believe that the challenge to NHS officials should be heard.”
The JCPCT decision is also currently the subject of a review by the Independent Reconfiguration Panel requested by the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, with a report expected at the end of March. That review follows referrals from the Health Scrutiny Committee for Lincolnshire and the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Joint Health and Overview Scrutiny Committee. The Royal Brompton is also set to lose its unit, while seven units will remain open.
NHE recently spoke to Anne Keatley-Clarke, chief executive of the Children’s Heart Federation, about the Safe and Sustainable review and the subsequent delays in implementing its recommendations. She told us: “There was a feeling that we knew there would continue to be challenges, but we had hoped that after the Brompton judicial review, which although obviously it was linked to what was happening in London, actually gave [the review] quite a good going over and did look at all the processes.
“From a patient’s perspective, of course I recognise that parents of children who have been treated at particular units and those they feel are at risk, or that have been earmarked to not continue with surgery, of course they have a right to fight for it. But I think now everybody recognises that the development of the standards were the right thing: they were clinician-led, not management-led, and it was inevitable that certain units were going to close down – really, can we just get on and do it now.”
The JCPCT says the evidence is absolutely clear that pooling surgical expertise into fewer, larger centres will be safer for patients and so benefit families, while the Safe and Sustainable review included a requirement that each surgical unit has four surgeons conducting between 400 and 500 operations per year.
(Image shows a protest in Leeds against the decision to close its heart surgery unit, courtesy SOS)
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