HEALTH bosses today welcomed plans to create a national intensive care bed bureau based on a pioneering system in the North West.

The impressive regional bureau, which covers East Lancashire hospitals, has persuaded the Government to extend it nationwide.

Hospitals across the North West already swap information through a central regional register at North Manchester General.

The bed bureau saves time and lives when there is a bed shortage and doctors are frantically looking for intensive care for seriously ill patients.

Now a similar system covering the whole country is to be created - with the local existing network becoming an important part in the UK system. North West hospitals currently provide information on their intensive care bed availability three times a day to a register at North Manchester.

Soon that information will be shared with a national register in London which in turn will provide details of hospitals outside the region.

Health Minister Gerry Malone believes the new national service - due to come into operation this winter - will help stop time-consuming phone arounds.

He also expects it to prevent repeats of highly publicised, harrowing incidents of gravely ill patients being ferried across the country in desperate attempts to find them a bed.

Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS Trust spokesman John Dell said: "We are pleased the intensive care bed bureau will be modelled on the North West system which we have confidence in.

"This is also a feather in the cap for the consultants who originally devised the system several years ago."

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