HEALTH bosses were today slammed as "crazy" over a plan to strip crucial medical back-up from one of East Lancashire's two main hospitals.

Trust chiefs are considering moving the intensive care and high dependency units from either Blackburn's Queen's Park or Burnley General Hospital - forcing some patients to travel further.

Health chiefs today said placing the units in one hospital would improve patient care by bringing together expert staff.

And a health boss said it is unlikely any beds will be lost if the transfer took place.

Today the plans were attacked as a loss of service for East Lancashire which raised questions about patient safety.

Peter Dales, chairman of the Blackburn branch of Unison, said: "The people of Blackburn and Burnley will want their facilities available for immediate treatment. I don't think either options are viable.

"We have to be concerned about patient care. It would have to be demonstrated in no uncertain terms that patients are not going to suffer. If somebody died in transit there would be hell to pay."

The plans have been put forward by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, which was formed from two trusts covering Blackburn and Burnley in 2003. It is trying to save £7.5million by April.

The options around intensive care and high dependency will create what health chiefs are calling a two-tier "hot" and "cold" site for East Lancashire, effectively downgrading one of the hospitals.

This would see more simple, pre-booked surgery at the "cold" site and more complex surgery and serious A&E admissions at the "hot" site.

The "hot" and "cold" site plan is one of four options which will go out to public consultation in January.

The options are:

oDo nothing

oBuild a new major hospital between the Queen's Park and Burnley General sites

oTake away the intensive care unit from one of the hospitals

oTake away the intensive care unit and high dependency unit from one of the hospitals.

The option of building a new hospital would see Queen's Park and Burnley General either closed or scaled down - although a health boss said a new hospital was looking unlikely considering the huge cost involved.

Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans said: "These proposals are crazy. For an area as large as ours, to diminish the service would be a great mistake.

"People find it difficult to get to the hospitals as they are. To reduce the level of services so people have to travel further would be a huge imposition on people."

A spokesman for the Lancashire branch of the Ambulance Service Union said: "This will impact on patient safety and the best place a patient can be is a hospital bed and not the back of an ambulance. It would take time away from the ambulance being available for frontline emergencies."

Burnley MP Kitty Ussher said she would look in detail at the plans but said: "I will not tolerate anything that leads to a reduction in service for Burnley people."

Blackburn MP Jack Straw said he had yet to see the options which he would "read with care".

John Amos, vice chairman of the trust's Patient and Public Involvement, which represents patients, said: "There is a possibility that particular services might be better if delivered from one site rather than from two as at present but it will be hard to find anyone who is engaged in delivering them who will agree."

Val Bertenshaw, who is leading the project for the Trust, said: "If you had no intensive care and high dependency then it would not be sensible for blue light ambulances to go to that hospital.

"Clinically, if you have got a road traffic collision or a heart attack or an emergency you really need to go to a full blown A&E as that has high dependency and intensive care back up."

Making sure a patient's condition does not deteriorate during the ambulance journey to hospital and assessing whether some would develop serious complications during routine surgery, requiring specialist care, were key issues, she said.