NHS Specialised Services

The future of children’s heart services

The NHS has announced that new congenital heart networks will be introduced across England and Wales to ensure safe and sustainable care for all children. On 4 July 2012 a Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts met in public to decide the future configuration of children’s congenital heart services. The JCPCT considered 12 options for change and decided that Option B would provide the best quality care. This will see congenital heart networks formally structured around Specialist Surgical Centres in Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle and Southampton. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and Evelina Children’s Hospital will lead the congenital heart networks in London and the South East.

The JCPCT also agreed 160 separate quality standards that must be met by children’s heart surgical centres in the future and new arrangements for collecting, analysing and reporting outcome data.

For more information on the decision, please see the Decision Making Business Case here. To read the press release on the JCPCT's decision, please click here.

In the immediate future, expert surgeons will continue to perform surgical operations at at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, Leeds General Infirmary, and Glenfield Hospital in Leicester. In the longer term, the NHS will transfer surgical services from these centres into the 7 surgical centres designated to lead the networks by 2014. More information is available here for parents of children with congenital heart disease who accessed surgical services at these centres.

Option B: Southampton, Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, London x2

The JCPCT carefully considered the responses to the public consultation and a number of publications before making its decision. An independent third party analysed the consultation responses and produced a comprehensive report, published on 24th August 2011, which is available here. Responses to public consultation by e-mail or post can be found here. The report is one of a number of publications that the JCPCT considered to help them evaluate the options and make a final decision on the best configuration for children's congenital heart services.

The JCPCT was provided with as much additional information as possible to inform its decision-making. This information included

• The Decision Making Business Case
• the findings of Health Impact Assessment
• analysis of family travel patterns. All responses to this independent analysis were also considered; responses from organisations can be found here
• the report produced by the independent panel of experts that reviewed children’s heart services and respiratory services at the Royal Brompton Hospital
• the capacity planning information that all Trusts involved in the review were asked to submit
• Report of Sir Ian Kennedy’s panel in response to questions from the JCPCT, 17 October 2011
• Report of Sir Ian Kennedy's panel on additional evidence submitted in relation to ‘innovation and research’
• Report to the JCPCT on behalf of Steering Group members, 17 October 2011