Serena Tierney slams Princess Royal Hospital cuts

4.26.52pm GMT Wed 23rd Mar 2005

Serena Tierney has attacked plans to move the Accident and Emergency 'Trauma' service from the Princess Royal Hospital to Brighton.

Responding to the news that the Brighton & Sussex University Hospitals Trust is to plough on with its plans to move the service to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Serena Tierney, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesman for Mid Sussex , said:

"This decision is fundamentally flawed. It ignores the views of local people who are the ones that use the service. It flies in the face of the widely-expressed concerns of health workers from doctors and nurses to ambulance and support staff. It is the wrong decision at the wrong time about the wrong place.

"The policy behind the decision is based on a Royal College report that is more than 5 years old and which itself relies on research that is now 20 years old. That report was due to be reviewed in 2003 and we are still waiting. But even if you accept its recommendations, they relate only to 10% of the patients that BSUH proposes to transfer to Brighton. And they are said only 'probably' to benefit from going to a major trauma centre rather than a properly-equipped and staffed DGH.

"Before you implement a policy, it is imperative to assess the effect on all those affected by it. I am not convinced that most trauma victims will have a better outcome by being transported to Brighton than they currently have at the PRH. And there is a serious question about whether a significant proportion will have worse outcomes.

"The Royal College report specifies essential facilities for a major trauma centre that do not exist at the RSCH and will not do for up to 7 years on its own figures. These include helicopter access which must absolutely not have subsequent road transfer, and a neurosurgery unit. The neurosurgery unit is at Hurstwood Park and the helicopter landing place on a local football pitch requires a subsequent 10 minute road journey.

"If major trauma patients are sent to Brighton rather than the PRH as at present, they could face nearly an extra hour of initial transfer to hospital, stabilisation in Brighton and then intra-hospital transfer fro neurosurgery to Haywards Heath. That cannot be better for them than to be treated in the PRH from the start.

"This proposal does not offer better medical treatment today. The authorities should think again."