News

Heart surgery unit at Leeds is ‘safe’

The children’s heart services unit at Leeds General Infirmary (LGI), which was closed temporarily in March last year over concerns about high mortality rates, has been declared ‘safe’.

Following an NHS England review into the safety and quality of care at the trust, an externally-led mortality case review concluded that services at Leeds are “safe and running well”.

However, a family experience review, which is based upon the stories of 16 families who volunteered to give their accounts, highlights issues with care and compassion within the trust.

Mike Bewick, NHS England deputy medical director, said: “We are confident from the findings of The Mortality Review that clinical outcomes at the trust are in line with other, similar heart surgery units in England.

“But this alone is not good enough – one family who feels let down by the NHS is one family too many as these harrowing stories demonstrate. We welcome the publication of findings to date, which reaffirms our commitment to safety, listening to families’ experiences, acting decisively when necessary and openly sharing information to promote safe care for everyone.”

Valuable information

Julian Hartley, chief executive and Yvette Oade, chief medical officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, added that the two reports provide valuable evidence that the children’s heart surgery service in Leeds is both safe and running well, but also show that 16 families received care that was not acceptable.

“We are pleased for our patients, families and staff that the mortality case review has confirmed the medical and surgical care provided by the children’s heart surgery unit in Leeds is safe,” they said. “We are very sorry however, that the 16 families who shared their stories with the family experience review felt we did not provide the care they had a right to expect. We sincerely apologise to those families and will of course, ensure we learn from what they had to say and improve our services as a result of this.”

In fact, some actions have already been taken to improve services at Leeds:

• The appointment of three permanent consultant surgeons, including an experienced congenital heart surgeon to lead the team, to further strengthen the expertise in the team;
• A full review of how the Trust handles feedback and concerns within the Trust and training for staff investigating those concerns, so it responds to families in a much morecompassionate way and recognise the benefit of learning from their feedback; and
• Major environmental improvements to the unit including the opening of a £1.75m children’s intensive care unit with state of the art equipment and for later this year, plans to open a new purpose built children’s cardiac ward located close to all the services they require.

Sharon Cheng, director of Children’s Heart Surgery Fund–the charity representing families and patients treated in the Leeds Children’s Heart Unit – said: “The report underlines what we have always known:  that Leeds is not considered an outlier in terms of its mortality rates from surgery.

“Leeds’ success rates in this speciality stand at 98%, an incredible statistic for a unit dealing with very complex cases and a complex speciality. Leeds’ outcomes and quality of care are in line with national requirements and those of other units, and parents can feel 100% reassured in the treatment that their children will receive at Leeds.”

She did say that the results from the family experience review, however, are being taken very seriously and that changes are being made. But in defence of the Trust, Cheng added: “We are concerned that the report highlights a set of complaints without providing any balance or context for these. The review team gave the Unit no opportunity to respond to these complaints, and they are not sufficiently set in context. 

“These are 16 complaints over a period of four years during which the Unit handled 40,000 patient cases and conducted over 1,500 operations.  While one complaint is too many, the vast majority of families and patients under Leeds’ care tell us on a daily basis what a superb service they receive from Leeds and that they feel the team has gone above and beyond to care for their children. We believe this should somehow have been reflected in the report.”

Background

Last year, medical director Sir Bruce Keogh suspended operations at LGIafter data showed that mortality figures were higher than expected – twice the national average. The suspension occurred just a day after campaign group Save Our Surgery won a judicial review against the closure of children’s heart surgery at the hospital under the Safe and Sustainable review.

Shortly after this a summit concluded that surgery should restart, following a review into mortality outcome data and analysis, staffing and clinical governance, which was released today.

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