Health: Stroke Care

Baroness Wall of New Barnet Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Wheeler on picking an opportune moment for this debate and on her concentration on after-stroke care. If you talk to clinicians involved in stroke, they say that the treatment you get immediately has a major effect on what may happen later on, so I want to concentrate on the situation in London. Many noble Lords will know that in London 6,000 people a year suffer a stroke. London is the region that has done most to improve its management of acute stroke. In the past, if you had a stroke in London, you could have been taken to any one of the 38 hospitals which have an A&E department. This fragmented care meant that too many patients were not getting the care and rehabilitation they needed. Over the past two years, London has reorganised stroke care. If you suffer a stroke now in London, you are taken rapidly to one of eight specialist hyperacute units capable of delivering the highest quality care from an expert team of clinicians. Following this, you will receive specialist, multitherapy rehabilitation care and ongoing medical supervision in one of 24 new stroke units.

The results show a dramatic improvement. The new arrangements will save between 300 and 500 lives a year with a commensurate reduction in disability. London has moved from a poorly performing system to one which is now not just the best stroke system in the UK, but is comparable to the best in the world. Dame Ruth Carnell, the chief executive of SHA London, has many things to be proud of but, in my view, none more than driving the reconfiguration of the stroke services across London.

I need to declare an interest when advising the House that Barnet and Chase Farm Hospital’s acute stroke unit, based on Spruce Ward at Barnet Hospital, is the first unit in London to be accredited as meeting all the standards set by the London cardiac and stroke networks.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, drew our attention to the CQC report, which reminds us of the need to ensure an equal focus is given to the development of stroke services outside hospital, and I support that. As ever, the rehabilitation end of the pathway is getting less attention than the acute, but it is important that stroke care is given uniformly, and I ask the Minister to take on board that inequality. Is the London model of hyper and acute stroke services one that the Government are minded to replicate and encourage across England and Wales?

All those who suffer this awful and possibly life-changing illness deserve the very best acute services. As the CQC says, the further extension of this superb treatment and care in supporting their lives is essential.