A hospital patient in a wheelchair after knee surgery was told she had to make the 17-mile journey home under her own steam.

Helen Webb said she was recovering from a general anaesthetic and unable to walk when she was told transport home was only provided for people who had hip operations.

It would have taken two bus journeys to get Miss Webb - who had £2 in her purse - from the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath to her home in Hodshrove Road, Moulsecoomb, Brighton.

Recent changes mean hundreds of patients in the Brighton area now have to travel to the Princess Royal for routine orthopaedic surgery while emergency orthopaedic operations are done at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Fears were raised at the time about the number of elderly patients and those without their own transport who would find it difficult to travel to Haywards Heath and back again, particularly as public transport links are not good.

But Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust said the move would cut the number of cancelled operations because routine surgeries would not have to be shelved to make way for emergencies.

Miss Webb was forced to call her 82-year-old father and ask him to pay for a taxi.

Hospital staff said Miss Webb, 42, was assessed for transport eligibility and not found to be "clinically in need".

Miss Webb, a mother of two, said she rang the ward twice before surgery and was told she would be taken home.

She said: "After the surgery they told me transport was only provided for hip replacement and other big operations, not the type I had."

Miss Webb, still groggy from the general anaesthetic she had received, sat in a wheelchair with a bandaged knee and a pair of crutches at her side in Albourne Ward at the Princess Royal, wondering how she was going to get herself and her bag home.

She said: "I would have had to get two buses, one from the Princess Royal and then another out to Moulsecoomb from central Brighton but I couldn't walk or even bend my knee. I don't have a car and nor does my partner or my dad.

"I have never been to Haywards Heath in my life and didn't really know where I was."

So Miss Webb telephoned her 82-year-old father Bertram Reed in Brighton to ask him to pay for a taxi fare out of his pension.

The fare cost Miss Webb £26.50. She had already paid a friend £30 to take her to the hospital for treatment.

The money was to cover the petrol and the time taken off work to make the trip.

Miss Webb said: "How can people like me and pensioners get home? I was upset and people on the ward were upset for me."

A trust spokeswoman said patients are assessed for eligibility for hospital transport.

She said: "If a patient is assessed to be clinically in need, transport will be provided, including if they are registered blind or disabled. We have to have criteria. It was felt Helen Webb was not clinically in need of transport."

Miss Webb is now calling on health chiefs to carefully consider moving health services.

A decision to move urgent surgery from Haywards Heath to Brighton has already sparked an outcry and there are possible changes to maternity services.

The Argus won a campaign to prevent the breast cancer unit being transferred from Brighton to Haywards Heath, partly on the grounds that transportation was too difficult.