Result??

Today I received an email from the Chief Exec of BASICS:

The Lords debate concerning the provision of pre-hospital care by the NHS scheduled for 2nd February was postponed due to the heavy snow fall in London on that day. This has now been rescheduled for Monday 23rd March at 1930 hours for 1 hour. The subject being debated is:

Viscount Falkland to ask Her Majesty's Government why the National Health Service does not provide doctors to treat critically injured and ill patients outside hospital anywhere in the United Kingdom except London.
It is possible to watch the debate live on line by going to:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Live.aspx#

Click on the Lords window and scroll down to the debate.

So, suddenly, the difficultlies around funding for prehospital care are going to be raised in the House of Lords!! I should go there, take as many of my fellow BASICS doctors and friends with, show our support for this debate; maybe even get our point of view across to those that can make a difference.

Then I started to wonder, surely this isn't the first time this has been discussed. So I had a little look, and found the following discussion in the House of Lords: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2008-06-11b.67.0&s=prehospital+segment%3A14025257#g67.2. On June 11th, 2008, the question of Specialist Emergency Trauma Response Teams was raised in the House. Near the end of what appears to be an hour's discussion of pre-hospital care, one of the Lords asked the Minister for Health:

"Just to clarify the Government's position, is the Minister saying that it is not acceptable that critical pre-hospital care should be dependent on volunteers?"

Whoa!! The Government thinks it is wrong for the care of trauma cictims to rely on BASICS doctors?? Result!! Erm, no. The answer, predictably for a Government Minister, was not a short one, but began with the following:

"Critical pre-hospital care is not dependent on volunteers, because any ambulance service or acute service will have a range of reactions to a major incident in its area. ..... Where necessary, teams of doctors will and should be called out to attend an incident to provide such care."

Sorry? Is that a "yes" or a no"? Those teams of doctors are the very volunteers that, according to the Minister for Health, critical pre-hospital care is not dependent upon.

So, I have very little faith that the debate at the end of March will provide any further answers.

A plea to all of you out there: write to your local MP. Get him to ask the question that was posed above. Let's get the Government to accept the fact that there is a problem with the lack of any central funding for doctors to attend critically injured people on the roadside. Thank you.