NEWS
 

Safe and sustainable children's heart surgery services

The NHS consultation on the Draft Care Standards for Children's Heart Surgery Services closed on 10 November 2009.  Click here to read CHF's response to the consultation.

For background to the NHS Safe and Sustainable Children's Heart Surgery Services programme, which will recommend in 2010 how these services should be organised in the future, read the Summer 2009 Newsletter and Powerpoint Presentation produced by the NHS programme team. 

For an overview of prospective service reconfiguration you can read the Winter 2009 Newsletter, which also includes the findings of the CHF commissioned MORI poll of over a thousand parents. For the latest on the Safe and Sustainable programme, visit the National Specialised Commissioning Group website.

Findings from the CHF survey of parents' priorities for future children's heart surgery services are now available.

Recommendation for fewer, larger centres

The programme is currently examining recommendations made at an NHS workshop in 2006 hosted by the National Director for Heart Disease and the National Clinical Director for Children, Young People and Maternity Services. The clinicians, managers and patient representatives from CHF and several of its member groups who took part in the workshop recommended that the NHS should develop fewer, larger centres of expertise for children's heart surgery.

At the moment, 11 centres in England perform heart surgery on babies and children. Spreading all the operations across this many centres makes it impossible for all of them to do enough operations to develop their skills and expertise to the same level.

Two key issues lie behind previous recommendations for fewer, larger centres:

  • Skills of the surgical team - heart surgery centres that carry out a higher-than-average number of surgical procedures perform better, as surgeons become more experienced/specialised;
  • Availability of surgeons - to ensure that surgeons do not work excessive hours and operate on babies and children when tired, a new European Working Time Directive limits the number of hours a surgeon can work. To comply with this law and ensure that there is full cover, each centre will need at least three, but probably five surgeons. 

Having fewer, larger centres should improve outcomes for children, however, some parents and their children would have to travel further for surgery.

Would you go further for better healthcare? Read an opinion piece by John Black, President of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Gathering parents' views

CHF has been gathering parents' views on what good children's heart surgery services look like to feed into the NHS programme Safe and Sustainable Children's Heart Surgery Services programme, by:

  • Co-ordinating a postal and online survey, distributed via CHF member groups to over 5000 parents and carers;
  • Inviting parents to email their views on what a good children's heart surgery service looks like. 
  • Listening to parents' views in focus groups at CHF's Federation Day in September;
  • Inviting the Safe and Sustainable Programme Manager to speak and answer questions at the Federation Day.

Survey

CHF asked Ipsos MORI, the independent research agency, to conduct research into parents' priorities for the future organisation of children's heart surgery services. Member charities of the Childrens Heart Federation sent out postal questionnaires and links to the on-line survey to over 5000 parents.

CHF reported the findings of the survey and themes emerging from meetings and contact with parents at an NHS Stakeholder Event on 22 October to which the lead surgeons and Chief Executives of the 11 centres have been invited. These findings are available as: