Success required having an array of equipment and people at the ready helicopter-rescue personnel, trauma surgeons, an experienced cardiac anesthesiologist and surgeon, bioengineering support staff, operating and critical-care nurses, intensivists.

NEWYORKER: The Checklist

He added that planning 20 years in advance was "a hugely important step forward" because past failures to plan far enough ahead had led to problems delivering improvements in patient care due to a critical shortage of doctors and nurses.

BBC: Patients welcome Wanless report

Money has been made available to pay for extra critical care beds, and the NHS is trying to entice former nurses, and those recently retired, back into the wards.

BBC: More ops cancelled at troubled hospital