When Welsh consultant neurosurgeons signed a letter to the Chief Medical Officer for Wales arguing for a single neurosurgical centre I was prepared to listen. The Health Minister's preference is for a single service on two sites so as to retain a service in Swansea. However, there is a danger that this will not be sustainable in the long term and may wither on the vine.
In particular there needs to be a critical mass of operations to maintain clinical safety and the service will need the capacity to deliver a fully staffed 24 hours, seven days a week emergency service on both sites. In my view there is a strong argument to have a single service centred on Morriston Hospital. This would maintain the viability of the trauma centre there whilst ensuring that everybody in South Wales will be within striking distance of a neurological service, either at Swansea or Bristol.
However, after listening the one of the Consultants on Radio Wales this morning it turns out that their agenda is not so much a single service but a single service based in Cardiff. It is another bid by Cardiff based physicians to build up their empire in the capital, backed up with nonsense arguments about threats to paediatric neurosurgery and the Cardiff Children's Hospital if they do not prevail.
If they want another fight then they have got it. The people of South West Wales will not stand for the further dilution of vital services so as to big-up Cardiff physicians.
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