Len Richards, Chief Executive of Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Dr Tom Dent will give a verbal update to the Committee.

Further to minute 72 (22/3/11) Dr Tom Dent, public health physician and adviser to the review, addressed the Committee and gave an outline of the responses to the consultation on the proposed establishment of two specialist vascular centres for Cheshire and Merseyside. Of the 2000 responses via the internet and the public meeting, 2 out of 3 said that the most important consideration was patient safety but only 1 in 6 stated local access was most important.

He gave details of the membership of the Review Panel and the procedures they had followed in making their recommendations to the Project Board. They had recommended the joint application received from the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust for a South Mersey Vascular network with the specialist vascular centre based on the Countess of Chester site.

Dr Dent acknowledged that there were a group of clinicians at Arrowe Park Hospital who disagreed with the proposal. A meeting had been arranged for Thursday 23 June at which the 2 Trust managers and leading clinicians from both trusts would be present and it was hoped that a position would be reached where all the issues would be dealt with satisfactorily.

Dr Dent and Len Richards, Chief Executive of Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, responded to comments from the Committee, Dr Dent stated that the UK had the worst mortality rate in Western Europe for aortic aneurysms. There was universal support to centralise vascular services with clear evidence that it would save lives. In respect of the consultation he would look into the figures of Wirral residents who had responded. There would be two vascular centres for Merseyside and Cheshire, the other being in Liverpool.

Len Richards commented that vascular surgery had been carried out at Arrowe Park Hospital since it opened, although since then it had developed into a separate specialist branch of surgery. The vast majority of vascular services would continue at Arrowe Park Hospital, relatively few patients, between 150 -180, would have part of their surgical pathway carried out at the Countess of Chester. For this relatively few number, all their pre and post surgery consultations / procedures would still be carried out at Arrowe Park Hospital.

He also outlined the reasons why this specialist centre could not be developed at the Clatterbridge site, in the main because there was no critical care support there.

The Chair then invited Dr Abi Mantgani, Executive Clinical Lead for Wirral GP Commissioning Consortium (representing 27 GP practices), to give a GP perspective on the proposals. As a GP in Birkenhead he commented that he would always prefer to see most services provided in Wirral but he did understand the clinical case presented for this high quality service to be provided at the Countess of Chester. He expressed some concern that the clinicians at Arrowe Park Hospital were not all on board at this stage. Although the Consortium had not been asked for a formal opinion he did take a balanced view and expressed support for the hospital trust working together with neighbouring hospitals to pool resources for a high quality specialised service.

Len Richards commented that he hoped that the meeting on Thursday 23 June, at which all 7 vascular surgeons would be present, would iron out a number of clinical concerns and the proposal could then move forward.

Resolved – That the verbal update and comments be noted.