Details about an assessment of children’s heart surgery centres have been revealed to a Leeds councillor.
The scores given to the Leeds General Infirmary unit by an independent panel of experts in 2010 were released under the Freedom of Information Act.
As previously reported in the Yorkshire Evening Post, Coun John Illingworth has been demanding the documents relating to the controversial decision to close the service.
Reams of paperwork was eventually provided, but he was told it would take longer to collate the individual scores.
They were drawn up as part of an assessment carried out by Sir Ian Kennedy of all hospitals carrying out children’s heart surgery.
Coun Illingworth, as chairman of the Yorkshire and the Humber Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee (JHOSC), has condemned the move to close the unit.
For months the committee had been asking for more information about the work of the Safe and Sustainable review, which drew up the plans for the shake-up, and the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts, which made the final decision.
Earlier this month a bundle of 3,400 pages of documents were provided and now individual scores given by assessors have been released, though details of who gave what score has not been revealed.
The assessment of how each hospital fared against a set of standards originally put Leeds at the second-lowest position out of 11 centres.
Coun Illingworth told the YEP: “We suspect there is some problem with these assessments because NHS London has tried to keep them secret for over two years.
“Yorkshire has about 10 per cent of the relevant UK population, but less than 1 per cent of the JCPCT advisors came from Yorkshire.”
Jeremy Glyde, Safe and Sustainable programme director, said: “The individual scores allowed the panel members to deliberate their findings, which led to the development of the panel’s final consensus scores. The consensus scoring was not reached by a mathematical formula, but by discussion between leading experts.”
He said a report from the panel was considered before the final decision was made.
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