The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing the debate and raising issues that are pertinent not only to his constituents but to those of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, who has been sitting next to me on the Front Bench listening to the debate and who shares a number of my hon. Friend’s concerns.
Before I discuss the substantive points about Wycombe, I should address my hon. Friend’s point about failing management in the NHS. He is right that there is a tendency to recycle failing managers in the NHS, and I am sure that the House will return to that point when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State responds to the concerns raised in the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, following the Department’s receipt of the report.
It is worth paying tribute to the dedicated health care workers in Wycombe and the surrounding areas of Buckinghamshire, because my hon. Friend has a number of excellent clinicians. He highlighted several local successes in delivering high-quality care through vascular surgery, and I know that there are good outcomes locally in specialties such as carotid endarterectomy. He has many excellent doctors and nurses and other front-line health care professionals, and also some very good managers, who have the best interests of their patients at heart and deliver high-quality health care outcomes for local patients on a daily basis, 365 days a year.
My hon. Friend rightly highlighted some local concerns about the ongoing loss of services at Wycombe hospital, and it is worth reiterating some of his words. He said that the hospital had lost A and E, consultant-led maternity—retaining a midwifery-led unit as a concession —and paediatrics, and this year the emergency medical centre was downgraded to a minor injuries unit, resulting in a repeat of much of the local outcry at the loss of A and E, and now he has highlighted eloquently the concerns over the potential loss of some of the vascular services at the hospital.
It is worth pointing out that I was reassured today before coming to the debate by local health care commissioners in the Wycombe area that there is a strong future for Wycombe hospital. There is no threat of the hospital being downgraded to the point of closure. Commissioners today reassured me—and I hope that this reassures my hon. Friend—that in many areas Wycombe provides a very good site further to develop health care services the better to meet the needs of the local population. It is an excellent satellite site, combined with Stoke Mandeville, for providing high-quality, close-to-home health care. From discussions that I have had, I believe that there may be the possibility of improving further some of the cardiac care that is offered.
I come specifically to the issues that my hon. Friend raised about vascular services, which are particularly important in Wycombe, which has a large Asian population, among whom, as we all know, there is a higher rate of cardiovascular disease. It has a higher rate of diabetes and many cardiovascular illnesses. My hon. Friend highlighted eloquently the number of local vascular services provided, and particularly referred to amputation services. We know that one of the complications of vascular disease and diabetes is the higher rates of amputation among some patients. It is quite right that he wants to make sure that high-quality services are provided locally to meet the established need for patients who require vascular services, and that those patients have a holistic service that looks not just at their immediate medical needs but provides high-quality surgical care.
We know that as lifestyles, society and medicine change, the NHS must continually adapt. The NHS has always had to respond to patients’ changing expectations and to advances in technology. When we do change and reconfigure services, it must be about modernising facilities and improving the delivery of high-quality patient care. In that context, it is also important that while we have to recognise that some services are better provided in larger centres of care— for example, the John Radcliffe centre, which can offer super-specialist services—where the clinical outcomes for patients are better, we must also provide high-quality local services, particularly for older people. We know that the majority of vascular patients often fall into an older age demographic, and it is important that when there is any service reconfiguration, those day-to-day outpatient clinics for vascular patients are maintained locally. I am reassured that in the potential reconfiguration, bread-and-butter outpatient clinics and continuity of care for vascular patients will be maintained.
The Government are also clear that the reconfiguration of front-line health services is a matter for the local NHS. Services should be tailored to meet the needs of local people, and the four tests laid down in 2010 by the previous Secretary of State for Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), require that local reconfiguration plans demonstrate support from GP commissioners, strengthened public and patient engagement, clarity on the clinical evidence base and support for patient choice. If my hon. Friend is worried that these tests have not been met in the local reconfiguration, he has the opportunity directly to challenge them or to ask the local health scrutiny committee to refer them to the Secretary of State for review.
Tim Farron
The Minister rightly says that the NHS reforms allow local councillors to vote to refer such matters to Ministers. In my area of Morecambe bay, that opportunity comes on 22 January. Will he assure councillors that Ministers will take such referrals very seriously and look into them with great rigour?
Dr Poulter
Yes. I assure my hon. Friend that when a referral is made by a local overview and scrutiny panel the Secretary of State will look at it and decide whether to refer it to the independent reconfiguration panel. That is often the decision that is made in these cases, but it lies initially with the Secretary of State, who will then have to consider whether to refer it. I am happy to write to my hon. Friend further to outline these steps if that would be helpful.
It is worth highlighting the national parameters that are being set for the delivery of good vascular surgery by the NHS Commissioning Board, which takes over full responsibility for commissioning from April this year. The board published a draft national service specification for vascular surgery for consultation. The consultation commenced in December 2012 and will conclude on 25 January 2013. It identifies the service model, work force and infrastructure required of a vascular centre. It says:
“There are two service models emerging which enable sustainable delivery of the required infrastructure, patient volumes, and improved clinical outcomes. Both models are based on the concept of a network of providers working together to deliver comprehensive patient care pathways centralising where necessary and continuing to provide some services in local settings…One provider network model has only two levels of care: all elective and emergency arterial vascular care centralised in a single centre with outpatient assessment, diagnostics and vascular consultations undertaken in the centre and local hospitals.
The alternative network model has three levels of care: all elective and emergency arterial care provided in a single centre linked to some neighbouring hospitals which would provide non arterial vascular care and with outpatient assessment, diagnostics and vascular consultations undertaken in these and other local hospitals. All Trusts that provide a vascular service must belong to a vascular provider network.”
In essence, this is about making sure that we deliver high-quality vascular care. There are two or three circumstances in which someone would require vascular care. First, there is emergency care—for example, when there is a road traffic accident, or when someone has a leaking aortic aneurysm, which is a very severe and potentially life-threatening emergency. We know from medical data that such service provided in an emergency is much better provided in a specialist centre—an acute setting such as the John Radcliffe, which would be the hub and the central focus. There is also good evidence that trauma care in any setting, including the requirement for neurological specialists potentially to be involved, is better served in a specialist trauma centre. A specialist centre provides better care in emergencies.
At the same time, it is clear from those models that there can also be a strong role for other hospitals as satellites of the central hub at the John Radcliffe. My hon. Friend clearly made the case for the high-quality outcomes at Wycombe hospital for carotid endarterectomies and other vascular services. I would suggest that there is a role for challenging local commissioners if they wished to remove some elective procedures from Wycombe when there is a case that they can still be delivered in a high-quality manner and to a good standard for patients.
Steve Baker
I apologise for intervening on the Minister when there is so little time left, but I can see the campaigners leaping up and down and saying that the clinical evidence in this case is that Wycombe is doing better than Oxford on aneuryism repair.
Dr Poulter
The evidence on the outcomes of patients from many trials does stack up over a period of time. Generally speaking, all surgeons need to do a minimum number of procedures in order to maintain regular competency, and to maintain continually high and good outcomes for patients when carrying out aneuryism repair. That is the reason for the service reconfiguration. The argument can be made, as my hon. Friend has done, that Wycombe should continue to provide those services, but we know that the national data and best evidence point to the fact that the services are best provided at specialist centres.
However, there is a good case for my hon. Friend to take forward to the local commissioners about ensuring that more of those elective procedures and elective amputations remain local, and I am sure that he will do that. I am sure that he will also want to talk to his local health scrutiny committee to ensure that it refers cases to the Secretary of State for review, if required. I thank him once again for raising the matter in the debate.
Question put and agreed to.