"A&E at Stoke Mandeville - why not admission to High Wycombe?"

My father-in-law lives in a nursing home in High Wycombe and having been seen by his GP, an ambulance was called to take him to A&E. When the ambulance arrived it took him to Stoke Mandeville hospital (a not inconsiderable distance from High Wycombe) where he was seen and transferred to High Wycombe hospital where he was admitted to a specialist ward.

We were told it was policy to send people to A&E in Stoke Mandeville even though the hospital was such a short distance from where he lived. We thought this was a strange thing to do for an elderly person, particularly when the specialism was based at High Wycombe.