IT CAN'T be long before ER, the great American hospital series, returns to Channel 4. In the interim, we will have to make do with another medical drama, which made a fleeting star of a confused old lady.

Thanks to the row that followed the case of Rose Addis, it was not so much a case of ER as 'er'.

In this show, the limb of truth went a funny colour and had to be chopped off. Not even that nice Dr Greene could have prevented the amputation.

Previously on 'er', the Labour Party dragged a young girl into the 1992 election, and the case of Jennifer's Ear became the medical plot of the moment.

At the time, the Tory health spokesman, Dr Liam Fox, attacked Labour's tactics, saying that by "dredging up personal cases of misery to try to find the one case that has gone badly in the NHS and overlooking all the reforms and successes that we have had, they have resorted to the lowest form of political debate".

Looking back, Dr Fox was right - and the words he spoke then could be uttered now by Tony Blair in response to the low tactics favoured by the Tories themselves. That's the trouble with these medical dramas, they re-cycle the script again and again, merely swapping the victims around a bit so you don't notice you've seen it all before.

The 94-year-old Rose Addis won her unwitting role in 'er' after her family complained, via a newspaper, about the treatment she received at a London hospital, the Whittington, where she spent three uncomfortable days. The Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, dragged her case into the House of Commons, using the excuse that he was speaking on behalf of a constit-uent (in fact Mrs Addis's daughter, and not the unfortunate woman herself).

In keeping with the hospital's name, the case of Rose Addis turned into the worst sort of political pantomime, and both parties came out of the emergency room - or the House of Commons, as it is more commonly known - with some pretty nasty stains on their pin-striped overalls.

Mr Duncan Smith emerged with the most muck on his operating gown, although it was a close call. The manner in which the Tory leader dragged one unchecked case into the Commons, using a story from a newspaper which loves to knock the NHS, and without acknowledging any comments from the hospital, was tawdry stuff. This was political opportunism, dressed up as championing the under-dog. No one wins in such circumstances, certainly not the patient, and hopefully not the shameless political leader with a hidden agenda to deflate the NHS.

As Dr Fox said, "the lowest form of political debate".

Tony Blair, with sudden new-found enthusiasm for the Old Labour-style NHS, backed the hospital against the patient (or the patient's media-savvy family).

In effect, the premier implied that anyone who complained about public services could expect to have their head shoved in the New Labour spin-drier, so to speak, which is hardly healthy.

No wonder the British Medical Association is now urging party leaders to stop using patients to conduct "highly-charged political knockabout".

Next week on 'er', more of the same probably.

All of which makes me wonder if there isn't a way in which the health service could be lifted out of politics.

Surely the day-to-day business of health is too important to be left to bickering politicians intent on out-smarting each other while the poor patient, in this case the NHS itself, is stuck for years on end in Casualty, to wind up the TV metaphor, waiting for the right doctor to come along.

Updated: 10:29 Thursday, January 31, 2002