Health watchdogs are to investigate North Yorkshire's Emergency Doctors service following Evening Press reports that doctors are refusing to respond to calls.

In the most recent case highlighted in the paper, doctors refused to go out to baby Jessica Nichols, who was struggling to breathe.

She was subsequently put into an oxygen tent at York District Hospital after her frantic mum, Yvonne Smith, arranged for her husband's boss to drive her to the Monkgate clinic.

There have been a catalogue of other complaints about the service from other York families in the Evening Press, including:

Ann Thomas, who complained after NYED refused to go out to her 15-week-old son, who was suffering from the killer bug meningitis. She took her son to the hospital instead

Leanne Daniels, who was advised by the service to beg a taxi-fare from neighbours to get her 10-month-old daughter to the Monkgate clinic when she contracted meningitis

Moya Wyatt, who complained after the service refused to send out an emergency doctor to her 13-year-old son, who had a severe ear infection and the bacterial form of meningitis.

Now York Community Health Council has called for the troubled service to be discussed with top health authority bosses next week.

CHC chief officer Malcolm Palmer said there were real concerns about what was going on.

What they would like to talk to the health authority about were the obvious differences between patients' views of when a home visit was necessary and doctors' views of when a home visit was necessary."

He said he would press the authority particularly hard on the criteria for when a home visit should be made following claims by Yvonne Smith that she had been told emergency doctors would come out only to attend the terminally ill or those who were bedridden.

Mr Palmer said: "That's not our understanding of the way these decisions are supposed to be made."

He said following the December 8 meeting with health authority bosses, he would report back to the next full CHC meeting on December 14.

A North Yorkshire Health Authority spokesman said it was meeting with all chief officers of the county's Community Health Councils on December 8 to discuss a range of issues including complaints, and the complaint reported in the Evening Press would be discussed at that meeting.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.