"Brain Haemorrhage – Excellent treatment, lack of rehabilitative care"

My friend suffered a brain haemorrhage in March this year. She was driving home from work in Grimsby at the time. She managed to stop the car at the side of the road but was then found by another friend and transferred to Scunthorpe General Hospital. There was a considerable delay at Scunthorpe, while she was assessed and then waited for ambulance transfer, but eventually she was transferred to Hull Royal Infirmary, for brain surgery. The surgery was a success, and to the delight of her devoted husband, my friend began to make a slow but steady recovery. Then she was transferred to the Stroke Unit at Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby.

When she first arrived at Grimsby, my friend's husband was told that the plan would be to move her to a dedicated Neuro-rehabilitation Centre at Goole as soon as possible. This was 3 months ago, and she is still in the Stroke Unit. Several weeks ago, my friend's husband (my friend is lucid, but has a tracheotomy tube in situ and cannot communicate easily, so her husband is the main point of communication with the hospital staff caring for her) was told that there was no funding available for patients from the Stroke Unit at Grimsby to receive care at the Neuro-rehabilitation centre. We questioned this, and then discovered that an individual funding request needed to be sent to the NELincs CCG. We helped the hospital to do this (my friend's husband actually sat in front of the computer with a member of hospital staff to help them fill out the online form) ten days ago, but are still waiting to hear the result. NELincs CCG states that it can take up to 40 days to reach a decision.

Meanwhile, my friend remains in the Stroke Unit at Grimsby, which appears to be chronically under-staffed. She receives very little in the way of rehabilitative care, and has been affected by several secondary infections. We feel (my friend's husband and I) that the environment in which she is currently cared for is wholly unsuited to her requirements. My friend was an active, vital, productive member of society, and we want her to have the best possible chance of recovering some of that vitality. We believe that this requires specialised neuro-rehabilitation, and are shocked and saddened at the funding restrictions which appear to be prohibiting this.

We understand that it takes 40 days for the CCG to make a decision about an individual funding request, but it is through no fault of my friend's that this request was not made until she had been in the Stroke Unit for over 2 months already. The plan at Grimsby appears to have always been to transfer her to the specialist rehabilitation unit. Although there is as yet no indication of when (or even if) this will occur, we have had no other ongoing care plans explained to us by the hospital. We are in despair, and have no idea how my friend's situation can be improved.