A glaring lack of credibility

Given that the realigning of child cardiac surgery provision across the country has been at least 15 years in the making, the manner in which this most sensitive of reforms has been so comprehensively bungled by the NHS and its various arms is little short of staggering.

It began with the bewildering decision by the Safe and Sustainable Review panel to recommend the closure of the unit at Leeds General Infirmary, a move that not only condemned patients and families from our region to make long journeys to Newcastle or Liverpool for treatment, but also overlooked the centre’s key location at the heart of the geographical area it presently covers.

Then, just a day after the High Court ruled that the review process had been “unfair and unlawful” in regard to the Leeds-based unit, NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh took the extraordinary step to suspend operations there based on unverified death rate figures which were subsequently found to be woefully inaccurate.

To further fuel the impression that there is a vendetta against the centre, Sir Roger Boyle, the Government’s former heart disease research chief, went on national radio to announce that he would not send his own child there for treatment, claiming that care at the unit was “on the edge of acceptability”.

It is hardly surprising, in light of the way this matter has been handled, that patients, families, clinicians and the wider public are now so distrusting of the process involved and so sceptical that it will end with a conclusion that best serves the children of this region.

The statement given to the Commons yesterday by Jeremy Hunt ended the weeks of silence from the Health Secretary and rightly signalled that Sir Roger Boyle will be removed from the Safe and Sustainable Review panel. Yet it is too little, too late. The overwhelming impression is that the NHS and Government are now engaged in a desperate scramble to justify a decision that has already been taken.