Blue light ban for severely ill patient's journey

AN ambulance taking a seriously ill heart transplant patient got stuck in traffic as it was not allowed to use its blue lights, a report has revealed.

Kelly Marie Wood, 20, died in June 2008 after becoming one of the youngest people in the UK to have a heart transplant.

Now Huddersfield and Calderdale NHS Foundation Trust have admitted that “the care we provided was not the very best it could have been’’.

In a letter to Kelly’s grandparents, Carol and Martin Wood, Diane Whittingham, chief executive of the hospital trust, acknowledged there were “deficiencies’’ in her care and “apologies are very hollow in the face of your loss’’.

The report reveals that Mr Wood pleaded with doctors to consider the possibility that Kelly was rejecting her transplant heart and not, as the doctors suspected, suffering the effects of a heart attack.

It also found that a crucial echocardiogram test which showed that Kelly’s heart was pumping poorly could have been carried out 24 hours earlier.

Most distressingly for Mr Wood, when it was decided her condition was so serious she had to be transferred to Middlesex’s Harefield Hospital, the ambulance was booked as a normal transfer and became stuck in traffic.

Travelling in his own car, Mr Wood reached the hospital before the ambulance did. He said: “We set off in our car, knowing Harefield was 200 miles away.

“We got to the hospital at 11.20am. The records show that the ambulance got there at 1.15pm. “I said ‘where have you been?’ They told me they had been held up in traffic. I couldn’t believe it.I said: ‘But you’ve got a blue light’. They said they were not allowed to use it as it was booked in as a normal hospital transfer.’’

The Trust’s report into her treatment acknowledges that if she had been reassessed on the morning of her transfer, a blue light ambulance or even a helicopter could have been used.

Kelly was born at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in January 1988, and doctors discovered she had an irregular heartbeat when she was just two days old.

Tests confirmed she had Noonan’s Syndrome, a condition which affects just one baby in tens of thousands. Later she suffered from depression and had stopped taking anti-rejection medication – something that doctors at Calderdale were aware of.

Mr Wood, of Deighton, Huddersfield, said: “I still live with the guilt that if I had taken her to Harefield or Leeds General she might have lived. The whole catalogue of failings from the word go has been unbelievable.’’

Director of nursing Helen Thomson said: “Since our internal investigation we have appointed an arrhythmia co-ordinator nurse to look after patients with unusual heart conditions, including patients who have undergone transplants.”

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