NHS Wales has proposed focusing critical care services for several patient categories in South Wales into five specialist centres.

The proposals address concerns that critical care services are “spread too thinly” across the region, as well as the need to reduce costs.

Centres for obstetric, neonatal, in-patient paediatric and trauma care would be created to serve patients along the ‘M4 corridor’.

Specialist services for these vulnerable patients are currently divided between seven hospitals in South Wales.

Dr Bruce Ferguson, Medical Director of Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board, said that sometimes patients were being passed from hospital to hospital in search of a suitable doctor.

The current critical care facilities were “spread too thinly over too many hospital sites,” he argued.

Two of the specialist centres would be based at Cardiff and Swansea hospitals, with a third developed in Llanfrechfa near Cwmbran and a fourth based in Merthyr Tydfil, Bridgend or Llantrisant.

Treatment for major trauma, currently provided in Cardiff and Swansea, would be provided by a fifth specialist centre.

Following a 12-week public consultation with 300 clinicians, the changes could be introduced in spring 2013.

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