Campaign says act FAST – but surely closing stroke facilities at Yeovil will only slow things down?

THE campaign message to raise awareness about what to do if someone has a stroke is simple – you have to act FAST. But there are genuine fears that treatment for patients could be slowed right down if plans to close facilities at Yeovil District Hospital come to fruition.

Some members of South Somerset District Council were last night (Thursdsay, February 27, 2014) less than impressed with plans being put forward by the NHS Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group to provide a centre of excellence for stroke patients at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton and shut an existing unit at Yeovil.

Councillors spoke of their concerns about people from the Yeovil area having to make a longer trek across the county to Taunton along the busy A303 and A358 instead of making the existing shorter journey to hospital facilities on their doorstep.

Cllr Henry Hobhouse said: “The A303 is not a road – it is a traffic jam. It won’t work.”

Cllr Tony Lock added: “Surely there will be risks to the patient over the time it takes to get to Taunton.”

Councillors were last night given a presentation by managing director of the SCCG, David Slack, and Dr Matthew Dolman about the proposals.

Dr Dolman told councillors that health officials wanted to see Somerset’s stroke services go from “good to excellent.”

Although he said “no decisions had yet been made” he was keen to see more Somerset patients seen, scanned and given the clot-busting drug Thrombolysis quicker and that a centre of excellence at Musgrove would help to achieve that with more specialist consultants, facilities and staff under one roof 24-7.

He described a stroke as an “earthquake in the brain” and said that people have 4.5-hours to receive Thrombolysis.

Dr Dolman said that merging the two existing centres at Yeovil and Musgrove into one at Taunton was “not a cost-cutting exercise.”

“In fact we will almost certainly have to invest money,” he said. “We have no fixed view on what the outcome should be.”

The proposals are still being put together and will go before the SCCG board in June this year.

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