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Grace Maxwell and partner Edwyn Collins in the musician’s West Hampstead recording studio |
‘SAVE UNIT THAT KEPT STAR ALIVE’
Hospital plea from partner of musician who suffered stroke
THE partner of rock star Edwyn Collins has called on health bosses to abandon their plans to shut down the award-winning stroke unit which saved his life.
Grace Maxwell said “common sense” should be used to keep an expert team based at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, warning that it needed to be “supported, not dismantled”.
Ms Maxwell, who has been Mr Collins’s partner for almost 30 years, told the New Journal: “The stroke unit was incredible. They knew exactly what to do. The staff were caring and professional. They saved his life.”
Health bosses swung the axe over the Royal Free’s service on Monday, ordering ambulance teams to take stroke patients to University College London Hospital in Bloomsbury instead.
The emergency stroke service at the Royal Free is expected to close in February.
Mr Collins – the former Orange Juice frontman who stormed the charts in 1994 with the solo single A Girl Like You – was saved at the Royal Free after suffering a stroke in 2005.
While in hospital, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and was plunged into a temporary coma that left him partly paralysed and unable to read or walk.
He has battled back, however, and was with Grace, who is also his manager, as she spoke to the New Journal from their West Hampstead studio this week, taking time out from work on his come-back album.
Ms Maxwell, who wrote a best-selling book about Mr Collins’ “restoration”, said: “Timing is so important when it comes to strokes – it is absolutely of the essence. Early treatment minimises the huge effect it has on the recovery of the brain. What needs to be applied is a bit of common sense. The Royal Free team needs to be supported, not dismantled.”
It took just 15 minutes for Mr Collins to reach the stroke unit hospital from his home in West Hampstead.
This week’s closure means his journey would have been almost twice the distance – three miles instead of 1.7 miles. London Ambulance Service believe they will be able to get any patient to one of the 12 stroke units within 30 minutes but patients living in Hampstead – and even as far away as Barnet – will now be taken to UCLH in the event of a stroke. NHS bosses insist centralised services will be more effective.
The decision was rubber-stamped by NHS London, the strategic body which organises the capital’s health services.
It has proved more galling for some critics of the move because the Royal Free’s team is officially rated as the second best in the country – out of 216 similar specialist units – by the Royal College of Physicians.
But despite its prestige, the cash-strapped Royal Free was unable to compete with a bid from its powerful neighbour, the University College London Hospital, in the new NHS market place.
The changes are part of reforms aiming to centralise all emergency stroke units in London into eight super-centres.
They are among the ideas of the former Health Minister Lord Darzi, who quit the government last week after setting in motion a host of changes – including polyclinics and GP-led health centres – that have been widely criticised by health experts.
Ms Maxwell said: “The health service does not need to be fixed by people like Lord Darzi. They should be speaking to the sisters and doctors who work on the wards. These decisions are not made on the basis of patient need. It is always about the bottom the line.”
Richard Sumray, chairman of the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts, which approved the decision in Kensington Town Hall on Monday, said: “These new centres will benefit all Londoners.
“They will radically improve the care of stroke patients by guaranteeing access to the best clinical expertise and technology, 24 hours a day. No hospitals in London currently provide care for patients to the very high standards that these centres will offer.”
While emergency stroke services will be axed at the Free, stroke victims will be transferred back there for care after emergency treatment.
A hospital spokesman said: “We are pleased that the committee agreed the Royal Free Hospital should be both an acute local stroke centre and a unit for transient ischaemic attack [mini-stroke] services.” |
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Your comments:
A FORMER "New labour" science minister, Lord Sainsbury has set up a foundation to improve policy making by applying scientific methods. Lord Darzi and his ilk are too fond of statements which have no scientific basis. When the Nuffield Foundation sponsored a new school science curriculum, they did it by careful trials in a range of schools. Oh that our political leaders had such wisdom!
D. Greenslade
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