The Member of Parliament for Scarborough and Whitby, Alison Hume, says the official figures being used to discuss stroke provision on the Yorkshire Coast significantly underestimate the true number of patients reliant on the service currently provided at York Hospital.
The MP confirmed her stance at a recent meeting of North Yorkshire Council’s Scarborough and Whitby Area Committee, where she was questioned by Councillor Rich Maw regarding her ongoing discussions with the York and Scarborough NHS trust.
The issue of where residents of the East Coast catchment area receive emergency stroke treatment has been a focus of Ms Hume’s work, who recently submitted a parliamentary petition urging the government to ensure Scarborough Hospital can once again offer timely and accessible emergency care. Currently, stroke patients often face journeys of "more than 40 miles" or more, causing "unnecessarily excessive clinical delays" as they are transported for assessment and treatment in York. Prior to 2020, patients would first attend Scarborough Hospital before being transferred to York, but a decision was later made on safety grounds to change to a direct admission model to speed up access to the hyper-acute unit.
Councillor Maw raised the discrepancy regarding patient numbers, suggesting that the current statistics do not capture the full demand from the wider region.
Councillor Maw posed the question to the MP:
"During your discussions with York, I understand a figure of around 350 stroke patients per year from Scarborough was referenced.
However, it appears that this number does not include patients who present in Whitby or Bridlington and who also depend on the same service pathway. If those areas are included, the total number relying on an East Coast solution is clearly higher.
Can you confirm whether you believe the quoted figure of 350 accurately reflects the real demand for the whole of the East Coast?
And given what you have learned through your visit and constituency work, are you prepared to raise this issue directly with the relevant government minister in the near future to ensure that stroke provision for coastal residents is properly understood and urgently addressed?".
In response, Ms Hume stated unequivocally that she believes the quoted number does not reflect reality.
Ms Hume responded:
"I don't believe that the quoted figure of 350 per year reflects accurately the true number of patients. I am prepared to raise it directly with the minister in the future. I'm working on presenting I think an adjournment debate on stroke services on the North Yorkshire coast and that will get a reply from a minister.
And I believe strongly that the there are many more patients that are not included in the figure and I'm going to be writing to other hospitals to see what their data is. I'm on a data trawling exercise at the moment."
The MP previously confirmed that she is "progressing my campaign to improve stroke services for Scarborough". She has already raised the need for Scarborough Hospital to "once again provide care to stroke patients" with Health Minister Karen Smith and has visited the Hyper-Acute Stroke Unit (HASU) at York Hospital. She is also writing to the national stroke director to address "the issue of stroke care in coastal communities".
The parliamentary petition, submitted earlier this month, requested that the House of Commons urge the Government to take action to restore the stroke service at Scarborough Hospital. A formal response from the Department of Health is anticipated by the end of January.
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