Transfer Of Slough Patient To Cardiff For Emergency Open Heart Surgery

EDM number 1342 in 1994-95, proposed by Rhodri Morgan on 03/07/1995.

That this House deplores the national shortage of intensive care unit beds which led to a 68 year old heart patient from Slough needing to be transferred from Wrexham Park Hospital, Slough, eventually to the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, after his consultant telephoned more than 30 hospitals in a search for a suitable intensive care unit back-up; is critical of the unnecessary delays in securing appropriate surgery and treatment for this patient, including delays in summoning an RAF Sea King helicopter from Plymouth to take him from Slough to Cardiff; and calls on the Secretaries of State for Health, Wales and Scotland to investigate the setting up of a hospital-to-hospital hotline or bed bureau to cover such emergencies, thereby ensuring that no other patients suffering from life-threatening conditions such as aortic aneurism have to depend on the persistence with the telephone of their hospital doctors, who could be better employed on other medical work, if only the national information on bed availability was provided.

This motion has been signed by a total of 47 MPs.