Top Tory calls for cuts to be scrapped

10:34am Friday 7th December 2007

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A TOP Tory MP is calling for plans to cut services at Westmorland General Hospital to be scrapped, after discovering ambulance services are falling "far short of the mark".

Shadow Health Minister Stephen O'Brien used the Freedom of Information Act to unearth response times of ambulances in Cumbria and found they only reached 69 per cent of emergencies within eight minutes - six per cent lower than national targets.

The quality of the area's ambulance provision was a key factor in deciding a controversial review of services at the Kendal hospital, which concluded from April it would no longer accept patients with conditions such as suspected heart attacks and strokes, and that improved ambulance arrangements would be put in place to convey patients to Lancaster or Barrow for treatment instead.

Mr O'Brien said plans to send South Lakeland patients further afield were "wholly inappropriate" if the North West Ambulance Service was "falling so far short of the mark".

He has now joined campaigners - thousands of whom have taken to the streets in opposition to the cuts in the past - in calling for the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust to withdraw its plans.

"When I visited WGH I said that the issue was whether the ambulance service could come up to a sufficiently high standard to make possible even a discussion of any reconfiguration of service at WGH.

"It is wholly inappropriate even to consider a move of coronary care to Lancaster with the NWAS falling so far short of the mark. The NWAS must sort out its performance in rural areas and in the interests of Cumbrian patients," he said.

"In the meantime anybody who cares about patient care will realise that any reduction in service at WGH would not just be an outrage but potentially dangerous."

Last month, Health Minister Ann Keen promised to personally investigate the acute services review, after a one-to-one debate with Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron who is a member of the campaign group NHS SOS - Save our Services.

Mr Farron agreed the response times of ambulances in the area "completely undermines the whole case for moving ahead with closures at WGH".

"I am aware of cases where patients in rural areas have had to wait an hour for an ambulance - then there is the travel time to hospital to consider too. Even if the NWAS is upgraded in line with other ambulance services elsewhere, it will not make up for the withdrawal of services at WGH," he said.

But John Burnside, NWAS chief executive, said "additional focused resources" and improvements had been agreed - including plans to change Grange Ambulance Station into a 24/7 operation - and would be in place by April 2008.

He also said Cumbria provided the service with a "series of challenges" and that there had long been a problem with under-funding but that the situation had been recognised and was being addressed.

"The quoted NWAS performance figure of 69 per cent relates to the whole of the Cumbria PCT area. NWAS performance for the Morecambe Bay area, which includes Westmorland, currently stands at 72 per cent which is actually higher than the level at which the trust is currently funded to perform," he said.

"The skill mix of staff in Cumbria is excellent with over 55 per cent of operational staff being qualified paramedics, which allows the (UHMB) trust to plan for a paramedic on every emergency vehicle."

Tony Halsall, chief executive of the UHMB Trust, said: "The coronary care unit and acute medical beds will remain at WGH until we are absolutely confident that (NWAS) can deliver the additional services we have agreed. High quality safe care remains at the top of our agenda."