New National Children’s Hospital – We Need to Get it Right
“For the sake of Ireland’s sickest children and their worried parents it is imperative that we get it right.” – June Shannon talks about plans for the New National Children’s Hospital.
The new national children’s hospital was back in the news again this week with the Irish Times reporting on Tuesday that according to the Minister for Health the Government had enough funding to build the new facility but not to equip it.
However this was followed the next day by a statement from Minister Varadkar welcoming a commitment by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin to fully equip the new Children’s Hospital.
“This Government is committed to developing a New Children’s Hospital that we can all be proud of. We recently appointed a leading Design Team to design the hospital, and the Development Board will apply for planning permission next year. In that context I welcome the commitment from Minister Howlin today that the Children’s Hospital will be fully equipped,” Minister Varadkar said.
Ireland’s new children’s hospital was first mooted almost 20 years ago and the intervening years between then and now have been squandered on debates over its location, delays and false starts, while its patients, those who were children in 1993, grew up to be adults.
In 2006 the Children’s First or McKinsey Report recommended that one national paediatric hospital be established in Dublin and that it be co located with an adult acute hospital. Following intense debate during which several sites in Dublin were proposed including to locate the new hospital on a green field site, the decision was made build it at the Mater Hospital.
The project was dealt a huge blow in 2012 when it failed to get planning permission at the Mater. We learned last month that approximately €35m is expected to be written off for the design and other work related to the abandoned project at the Mater site.
Having failed to get planning permission for the Mater site the Government decided to locate the new hospital at St James’s Hospital in Dublin instead despite critical voices that, like the Mater, the site was too small and not easily accessible by car.
Despite this however the Government has stuck to its guns and in September announced the appointment of the design team for the new children’s hospital. The next steps are to secure planning permission and commence construction, with the new hospital expected to be opened on a phased basis in 2018.
The new children’s hospital will cost €650 milllion. It will have 384 in-patient beds including 62 critical care beds, all in single en-suite rooms and 85 daycare beds. It will also house 14 theatres, including three hybrid theatres to facilitate access to imaging during surgery. There will also be two satellite centres based at Tallaght hospital on the southside and Connolly Hospital on the northside of Dublin, which, together with the new hospital, will accommodate 111 outpatient consulting examination rooms and emergency and urgent care facilities.
Ireland’s new National Paediatric Hospital will incorporate the three current Dublin children’s hospitals of Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght and will be the regional hospital for sick children from the Dublin area as well as the national tertiary referral centre for the entire country. When you think that Temple Street Hospital was first established in 1872 with children and parents having to endure cramped and out dated facilities then 2018 and the new hospital cannot come soon enough.
The decision to co-locate the new children’s hospital with an adult facility is in my opinion a good one as it gives timely access to a wealth of clinical and medical expertise on site when needed.
The Government also plans to develop a maternity hospital on the site of the new hospital which is also to be welcomed given that a number of new mothers every year have to be separated from their newborns and transferred from a maternity hospital to an adult facility for specialist care. Therefore the location of a maternity hospital on the same site as an adult acute hospital will mean that this will be a thing of the past.
The importance of having a co located maternity hospital on an acute adult hospital was highlighted this week by the Master of the Rotunda Hospital in that maternity hospital’s corporate report for 2013.
Writing in the report Dr Sam Coulter Smith said “The Rotunda’s long term ambition is to be co-located with a significant acute adult hospital that can serve the needs of our community and the region in a more holistic manner than we can in a stand-alone facility”.
Reporting on the Rotunda’s corporate report yesterday the Irish Independent stated that 10 women were rushed from the Rotunda to the Mater last year, highlighting the problems caused by not having both facilities co-located on the one campus.
The hospital is seeing a growing number of highly complex patients but has no immediate access to intensive care facilities, the paper added.
Therefore the addition of a maternity hospital on the site of the new children’s hospital at St James’s Hospital makes a lot of sense. The proposed new maternity hospital may replace one of the three Dublin maternity hospitals the Coombe, the Rotunda or Holles St.
However with plans underway to relocate the National Maternity Hospital in Holles St to St Vincent’s University Hospital, it is likely that either the Rotunda or the Coombe may move to the new Children’s Hospital site. However this has not been confirmed.
What has been confirmed for now is that the new National Children’s Hospital will be built on the St James’s Hospital site and if planning permission is granted, it is expected to be open for business in 2018.
This is likely to be Ireland’s only specialist tertiary children’s hospital for many years to come, so for the sake of Ireland’s sickest children and their worried parents it is imperative that we get it right.