Children's hospitals under review

The plan for the reconfiguration of services provided by children's hospitals in Dublin will be drawn up by the Health Service…

The plan for the reconfiguration of services provided by children's hospitals in Dublin will be drawn up by the Health Service Executive at the end of January, its chief executive said yesterday.

Prof Brendan Drumm said his officials were looking at best practice internationally in terms of how paediatric services were provided and he would be guided solely by what was in the best interests of patients. This means complex paediatric surgery is likely to be provided at one site only in the future.

"We are going to determine what is in the best interests of children across the country in terms of the provision of paediatric services and that's the process that is now being undertaken, and we'll be informed by experts who will review practice at the moment across the developed world and we would hope that whatever is put in place would be consistent with those standards," he said.

Minister for Health Mary Harney said in September when she visited Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin that she no longer wanted to see specialised treatment services for children spread across "a number of sites". Prof Drumm said yesterday that Ms Harney had asked the HSE to report to her by the end of January on how the services should now be organised.

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"We would hope that we would be able to achieve that deadline," he said.

Meanwhile, Ms Harney reiterated yesterday that she was of the view that it would be a lot easier to move Crumlin hospital, which is in need of redevelopment, to a green field site rather than rebuild it on a piecemeal basis on its existing site.

"I think it would be very disruptive of the hospital if we were to seek to build a new hospital on campus. It would also, I think, be more expensive and it would take longer because of the physical restrictions on the site at Crumlin. The decision hasn't been finally made until we get some advice from Prof Drumm, which I understand we'll have shortly," she said.

She and Prof Drumm were speaking to reporters after the annual conference of the National Council for the Professional Development of Nursing and Midwifery in Dublin.

The conference, attended by about 1,000 nurses, heard how giving extra responsibility to nurses can pay off. A clinical nurse specialist, Gordon Lynch, outlined how he has been able to reduce waiting lists for child and adolescent mental health services from a year to less than four weeks in Kildare by assessing children and offering them therapy at the same time.

He said there was no reason why this model couldn't be used in other areas. "The problem was not just the frustration to parents of waiting a year for services. The problem was that the behaviours causing the difficulties weren't being addressed at the right time, all of which led to low staff morale," he said.