Plan to cut local A

LONDON, Dec 6 (Reuters) Government plans to cut some services at local hospitals and concentrate them at specialist regional centres were backed by an independent study and a leading doctor.

The support comes as Prime Minister Tony Blair was attending a conference where he was expected to defend reform of the NHS against claims that the changes will put patient care at risk.

The plans have raised concerns that local hospitals will lose their full accident and emergency services and that patients may die before they reach a specialist unit further away.

The government says the changes will improve patient care, while opponents say the real issue is saving money.

But a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research said yesterday campaigns to keep services in local hospitals could lead to more than 1,000 unnecessary deaths each year.

It said new techniques to treat heart attacks could save 500 extra lives a year if all patients had access to the specialist care required.

A further 770 people with severe injuries could be saved each year if all could be taken to specialist trauma centres.

''Hospital change should be good news for patients,'' said IPPR Associate Director Richard Brooks.

''If heart attack and serious injury victims were taken past their local hospitals to a specialist centre, they would be significantly more likely to survive.'' Roger Boyle, the Department of Health's National Director for Heart Disease, told the BBC it was better for heart attack victims to travel by ambulance to get specialist care, provided they were in the care of a paramedic.

''What we are talking about is a change in the mix of patients that are managed in those local centres, not about closure.

''This is about making sure that patients are streamed in the right way and they get to the right place at the right time.'' But opponents said there was a danger that accident and emergency centres could be closed before more specialist centres were up and running.

''The crucial thing is you have to retain locally services that will cope with the common emergencies,'' Richard Taylor, independent MP for Wyre Forest, told BBC Radio.

Taylor won his parliamentary seat on the back of a campaign to save services at his local hospital at Kidderminster.

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