Statement on Neurosurgical Services in South Wales
Here, Dr. Dai Lloyd AM sets out his response to the recent announcement on Neurosurgical Services in South Wales.
“The removal of Emergency Neurosurgery from Morriston Hospital to Cardiff is a huge disappointment to me personally.
This decision is not my favoured option – I want to see Emergency Treatment available in Morriston to cover the whole of Mid, South and West Wales.
As someone who has been campaign for a number of years to keep the Unit, and the Paediatric Neurosurgery service prior to that, in Swansea, I have been fortunate to have been joined in that campaign by a number of consultants at Morriston and Singleton Hospitals. We were also supported by the previous NHS Trust in opposing the transfer of Neurosurgery to Cardiff.
The reality is that this support no longer exists and that is disappointing. Neurosurgery consultants at Morriston and the current Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Health Board both support the transfer of emergency neurosurgery to Cardiff and that change in position is key.
Prior to the 2007 Assembly election, I forced a vote on the Assembly floor, which called for the retention of the Neurosurgery Unit, as it was, in Swansea. Plaid was the only party to unanimously support my motion. 22 Labour AMs, 5 Lib-Dems and 3 Conservatives voted against keeping the unit at Moirriston. This included both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative Health Spokespeople, who wanted to centralise everything in Cardiff.
This vote was key and gave those who wanted to centralise everything in the capital city a vital boost.
When Plaid came to power at the Assembly in 2007, the One Wales agreement stated that we would ‘review the NHS reconfiguration’ which Labour had embarked upon and also to ’revisit and revise proposals which reconfigure individual services through single site solutions’. In everyday language, the Minister Edwina Hart and myself as a local campaigner were keen to see the Morriston Neurosurgery unit protected.
When the Minister announced that she had appointed Dr. Alan Axford to lead an implementation team to bring about ‘one service on two sites’ I was confident that the strong local campaign over a number of years had succeeded.
What has happened since has undermined my position, and that of the Minister.
The shortage of junior doctors at Morriston Hospital over the summer has led to the acute emergency intra-cranial neurosurgery service already being transferred to Cardiff, due to fears over the safety and sustainability of the unit.
The second, and important point, is the support of consultants and all the Health Boards covering Mid, South and West Wales to transferring the emergency service to Cardiff indefinitely. No one should underestimate the weight of clinical opinion and support.
On a positive note, we have managed to increase spinal neurosurgery at Morriston with improved neurological services throughout South West Wales, as well as consolidating the position of the excellent Burns and Plastics unit at Morriston and securing Morriston’s designation as a level one trauma centre. Without the campaign, all neurosurgery would have been centralised in Cardiff, and this status lost.
This campaign was only ever about patient care, and in looking forward, with emergency neurosurgery now centralised in Cardiff, there are clearly implications for emergency admissions, including emergency GP admissions.
With this in mind I have already put to the Minister the vital need to regularly scrutinise and monitor the performance of the new emergency neurosurgical arrangements, in view of the huge concern engendered by this issue in Swansea and South West Wales over the last seven years.”
