Spin doctors: More spent on PR than review into heart surgery

Health chiefs will tomorrow choose the locations where life-saving surgery will be performed under changes designed to improve outcomes by concentrating services in a smaller number of centres.

Campaigners fear surgery could be axed in Yorkshire forcing hundreds of youngsters to travel to units in Newcastle, Liverpool or the Midlands.

Four options were originally set out but the retention of services at Leeds General Infirmary was proposed in only one which was the least favoured option.

Now the Yorkshire Post understands at least 10 different configurations will be looked at, although it remains unclear how many incorporate Leeds.

Meanwhile, an investigation by a businessman from Leeds, whose grandson has undergone several heart operations at the infirmary, has found the Safe and Sustainable review cost nearly £1.7m to the end of 2011 – with the largest amount totalling £700,000 spent on public relations and advertising.

Bob Ward, who uncovered the details in a Freedom of Information request, was told £738,000 had been spent on public relations and advertising and a further £383,00 on public consultation meetings. But reviews by an expert panel only accounted for £301,000.

Mr Ward said: “I find it puzzling that more was spent on PR than on assessing the units themselves. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the review has been seen as fundamentally flawed and has received so much criticism.

“It is also illogical that the original review was not widened to include Scotland where there are excellent but under-used facilities for children’s heart surgery at Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow that could be used to treat young heart patients from northern England.”

His grandson Lyall Cookward was born with multiple heart, respiratory and digestive defects.

“He’s just had hit third birthday and he’s doing pretty well,” he said. “He wouldn’t be here without the heart unit in Leeds.”

Sharon Cheng, of the Leeds-based Children’s Heart Surgery Fund charity, said the decision to widen the number of options being considered showed objectors’ complaints had been heard.

More than 600,000 people have signed a petition calling for services to be kept in Leeds. Campaigners have backed an option which would see services continuing in Leeds but ended in the smaller units of Newcastle and Leicester. Both run highly specialist services for small numbers of heart patients which would need to be re-located.

A spokesman for NHS Safe and Sustainable said the figures only related to specific parts of the review and the full costs would be published at a later date.

“Safe and Sustainable has been the largest ever NHS consultation, resulting in more than 75,000 responses from across the country and requiring substantial communications support.

“The scale of interest in the consultation and the volume of calls and enquiries from the public and media were significant.

“Safe and Sustainable went to great lengths to ensure everybody who wanted to comment on these important issues was able to have their say.”