'National scandal' as Blackburn patient removed from waiting list

6:10pm Friday 4th July 2008

Comments (1)   Have your say »

BLACKBURN MP Jack Straw has pledged to take a patient’s case - described by one critic as a ‘national scandal’ - to the top of the Department for Health.

Annmarie Whittaker, 36, of Highfield Gardens, in the Infirmary area of Blackburn, has been removed from the waiting list for a pain relieving injection - because she has paid for a three-month course privately while she waits till October for the NHS.

This is national NHS policy when patients go private, but Mr Straw said that he was “very concerned” and would discuss the case personally with the Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson.

Blackburn’s health scrutiny committee chairman Roy Davies said the “absolutely ridiculous” situation was a “national scandal”.

Miss Whittaker first fell ill soon after her son Callum, two, was born by Caesarian section in July 2006.

She has already received an apology from the Royal Blackburn Hospital after being moved between five different wards during a four-week stay in hospital last year.

The mother-of-one still has not received a diagnosis from consultants, but said she had been left incontinent and in constant pain.

In her latest appointment, she said that a doctor had suggested nerves may have been trapped during her Caesarian, and recommended a course of injections to ease the pain and re-activate her bowels.

But she could not have the injections until October on the NHS, and family members have used their savings to pay for a private appointment, booked for this month.

Now, she has been told that if she wants to continue the course on the NHS, she will have to go back to her GP to be referred to the hospital again, before she can get back on the waiting list.

After two years of ill-health, Miss Whittaker is desperate to get back to work, and said she and partner Mark Taylor, 29, were struggling to pay the bills.

She said: “I’ve been told these injections will work for about three months, so I thought when I booked the private appointment that it would work out great for the next one in October.

“We nearly lost everything because I couldn’t work last year. I’m dosed up on strong painkillers that bring me out in hot sweats and I can’t even play with my little boy.

“These injections might not even work, but I’m so desperate that my family are taking money they have saved all their lives to pay for me to have them.”

Mr Straw said he would be visiting Miss Whittaker to discuss the case.

He said: “I am very concerned with the way this lady has been treated and I will meet her again as soon as possible.

“I have already taken it up with the hospital and I will be discussing this case personally with the Secretary of State for Health.”

Coun Davies said: “If she pays for another treatment, that will just mean she has to wait another six months or more for the third one. It’s an absolutely ridiculous situation.

“It’s a national problem and it’s a scandal.

“Someone should intervene on her behalf, and that someone should be the Health Secretary Alan Johnson, because he is the person responsible for this policy still being in place.”

The NHS Confederation, made up of senior doctors throughout the NHS, has called for a rethink on the rules for patients paying for extra treatments.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said this policy had been in place for the past 20 years.

Lynn Wissett, director of clinical care and governance of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, urged Miss Whittaker to keep “lines of communication open” to discuss areas of concern.