RCN North West response to decision over specialist treatment centres for Cheshire and Merseyside

Published: 19 July 2012

Despite opposition from staff, patients and local Wirral councillors, the trust boards of NHS Merseyside and NHS Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral, have chosen the Royal Liverpool and the Countess of Chester hospitals to be the specialist treatment centres for Cheshire and Merseyside.  Complex surgery on burst or blocked blood vessels and arteries will no longer be performed at Arrowe Park or Warrington hospitals, where campaigners have fiercely fought plans to move services to the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester.

In response to the decision, RCN Officer for Merseyside and Wirral, Colm Byrne said:

“The RCN is disappointed to hear that further NHS services will be rationalised in this way. It is all well and good for the Commissioners to say that Regional Vascular Centres will provide 'excellent' care, but we've not seen the evidence for this? It is our view that the move, which we opposed when it was first proposed, is part of a cost cutting excercise to save £20bn pounds from the NHS budget nationally".

"We've seen this sort of thing before when an attempt was made to move the Burns Unit from Whiston to Wythenshawe. Patients were worried that this would lead to longer journey times to receive emergency care and so increase risk. In this case, if a patient in New Brighton has a serious vascular accident and needs to go to the new regional centre in Chester, then they face a journey of some 25 miles or 36 minutes - instead of the current 5 miles in 5 minutes to Arrowe Park.  Additionally, on-going treatment many miles from home places greater stress on relatives and makes discharge planning and rehabilitation more complicated".

Colm added: "Many of the staff and consultants on the Wirral feel that these decisions are made by non-clinicians who are driven by cost-cutting pressures rather than patient care. There is a genuine fear that if vascular services move to Chester other specialties might follow and that the people of Wirral will be left short-changed".