Kendal hospital ‘victory’ applauded

9:50am Friday 18th July 2008

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CAMPAIGNERS have vowed to continue fighting cuts at Kendal’s Westmorland General Hospital despite health bosses agreeing to keep the site open to heart attack and stroke patients.

The turnaround, which will see a two-bed Cardiac Assessment Unit open at the Kendal hospital, means critically-ill patients from South Lakeland could receive emergency care at WGH rather than face a journey to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary or Barrow’s Furness General Hospital.

The CAU will sit within the newly-launched Primary Care Assessment Service, which is being led by GPs at the front end of WGH, and it will have the facilities to cater for patients who are referred by their GP or who present themselves at the hospital with chest pains and turn out to be suffering a heart attack.

Crucially, it means that South Lakeland patients who suffer a cardiac arrest in the back of an ambulance and do not respond to treatment, can be taken straight to WGH where specially-trained doctors manning the CAU will have the technology to perform life-saving thrombolysis before transferring patients to Lancaster or Barrow when their condition is stable.

The news prompted cheers of victory this week but campaigners, including those behind the NHS SOS – Save Our Services group, are still concerned about hospital bosses’ plans to close the four-bed coronary care unit and a medical ward at WGH next month.

They are pressing for the closures to be referred to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel (IRP) – an independent Government body that scrutinises changes within the NHS. The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, which runs WGH, will put its case for closure to a special Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) to ask for members’ agreement at a key meeting on July 29.

For story in full, see the July 18 Westmorland Gazette.