08 December 2006
Plans to downgrade some local accident and emergency departments and replace them with regional 'super A&Es' are vital if patient care and survival rates are to be improved, Prime Minister Tony Blair has said.
'For life-threatening emergencies a specialist is needed at once. But that level of expertise cannot be offered everywhere,' Blair told the inaugural meeting of the primary care trust network, insisting that NHS deficits were not the driver for these changes.
Sir George Alberti, the national director for emergency access, said the best level of specialist care 'never has been, and never can be' provided by every A&E department. Instead, the most seriously ill patients should be taken directly to a regional specialist centre, even if that meant travelling some distance.
'We will have to continue to ensure that ambulance services can all offer “hospital on the move” support to patients,' he said. 'There will be many more paramedics and nurses trained to treat people at home and stabilise a patient's condition for longer journeys.'
But Tony Shaw, chief executive of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, told Public Finance that ambulance services were often left out of reconfiguration discussions.
'[Hospitals] wonder why they haven't got satisfactory transport in place,' he said. 'They have to bring them in early on…The ambulance service then has the chance to bid for the extra resources they might need so they can be in tune with it.'
PFdec2006
