GUERNSEY heart patients will now go to London instead of Southampton for treatment. The decision followed complaints about ‘unnacceptably’ long waiting times and cancelled operations.

One local man said that when he was admitted for treatment, cardiac patients staged a ‘strike’ when their procedures were cancelled after being prepared for major heart surgery.

Francis Bowerbank, 56, who waited 10 months for an angiogram and was then told he would have to wait for a year for a multiple heart bypass operation at Southampton, said: ‘One patient went berserk and began marching around the ward because his operation had been cancelled twice. Another patient had his operation cancelled four times. They staged a bit of a riot.

‘I don’t blame the hospital entirely as it had got [an outbreak of the antibiotic-resistant infection] MRSA and a shortage of intensive care nurses.’

But he said he blamed Guernsey which, he believed, had ‘consummately failed’ to provide the best possible care.

‘I am sure there are people not alive because of it,’ he said.

Mr Bowerbank’s complaints surfaced just as the new arrangements for heart patients were publicly revealed.

Now, all new cardiac patients who need off-island investigations and treatment will go to Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in central London, which involves flying to Gatwick and then taking a train to the capital.

The Health and Social Services Department has negotiated a new contract with the London hospital trust via a consortium of health managers from Guernsey, Jersey and Gibraltar.

The new deal means that heart patients should not have to wait any longer than 13 weeks to be seen, compared with as much as 10 months or more at Southampton, just for investigative procedures. But it also means that patients who would prefer to go to Southampton will, as a general rule, no longer be able to unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Using the consortium’s ‘purchasing power’ – which is similar to a UK primary health care trust – means that by channelling all cardiac patients to Guy’s and St Thomas’, Guernsey is charged the going NHS rate for procedures rather than a more expensive private rate.

In the past few months the NHS Trust has cleared a backlog of 34 patients who had been waiting more than five months. But some of them have been operated on privately to clear the backlog, at no extra cost to the island.

Lynne McLagan, the department’s clinical services manager, said waiting times for Southampton patients were becoming unacceptable.

Complaints were made on several occasions by the previous Board of Health but the south coast hospital was ‘really struggling’ and acknowledged that this was so, she said.

So Guernsey turned to the London trust, which had already forged strong links with Jersey and which also runs Guernsey’s renal dialysis unit as a satellite department.

‘We brought over all the clinicians from Guy’s to talk with our specialists and look at the waiting list and come up with a practical solution,’ she said.

As a result, the 34 patients on the long-term waiting list were asked whether they would like to transfer and they agreed. A further 20 who had waited between five and nine months continued to be seen at Southampton.

Mrs McLagan said it was felt that Guy’s had given an excellent service in clearing the backlog of patients and the Medical Specialist Group was very pleased with the new arrangement.

Health minister Peter Roffey said he had received a number of phone calls from people complaining about the waiting times.

Southampton cooperated fully with the switch and there was some relief that pressure had been lifted, he said.

Mrs McLagan said it was accepted that some patients might feel the journey to London was more daunting. But, she said, the route had been tested with a patient and was found to take about the same amount of time. Contingencies are in place in the event of patients being fog-bound or delayed.