New setback in campaign to keep child heart surgery in Yorkshire

Health chiefs last week announced plans to centralise children’s heart surgery at six or seven centres of excellence, but only one option included Leeds Children’s Hospital – leaving hundreds of patients and their families facing lengthy treks to Liverpool, Leicester or Newcastle.

Now NHS chiefs have confirmed the configuration involving Leeds has the bottom ranking under a complex scoring process covering quality, accessibility and sustainability of services.

The director of the Children’s Heart Surgery Fund charity in Leeds, Sharon Cheng, said it was difficult to understand why Leeds was the lowest option given its high quality of care and ease of access. She warned that alternatives which left families travelling miles from the area would cost lives.

“Some of our families feel Leeds is too far away, never mind Liverpool or Newcastle – some have only just reached the hospital in time,” she said.

The medical director at Leeds hospitals, Peter Belfield, said: “We do not think the scores sufficiently reflect advantages Leeds has in terms of access, the size of our local population and the services we provide on a single site.

“We know that children’s heart surgery in Leeds is as safe and high quality as at the other centres being reviewed and we are as well placed as any to be able to expand our facilities to meet additional demand in the future.

“Leeds is also one of only two centres in the country which has its children’s heart surgery service as part of an integrated children’s hospital on a single site and we would have expected to be scored highly on that fact alone.”

The plans face a four-month consultation before a final decision is made in July.