Expert: Identify needs before building hospital

CHILDREN’S needs must be clearly identified before building starts on Ireland’s new national paediatric hospital, the head of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children has warned.

Dr Jane Collins, chief executive of the London hospital, said that while specialities needed to be centralised, children were best cared for at home.

“You need to decide how you want to provide care before you decide what kind of building you need to deliver that model,” she said.

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children was founded in London in 1852 and it is the largest centre for children’s heart, brain and cancer surgery in Britain.

Redevelopment work costing €486 million that began in 2002 is due to be completed by about 2014.

Dr Collins was in Dublin yesterday to address a conference organised by Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Dublin.

A report by RKW consultants for the Health Service Executive (HSE), published earlier this month, endorses the Mater site in Dublin as the location of the country’s €800m hospital.

The weighty report is currently being considered by the board of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, which wants the new hospital to be built together with a maternity hospital on undeveloped land.

Great Ormond Street Hospital is a specialist hospital caring for children referred by other hospitals or for children with special needs. As well as providing specialist care, the planned new national children’s hospital with between 352 and 454 beds will provide secondary, tertiary and emergency care.

Dr Collins said Great Ormond Street has just completed phase one of its redevelopment plan and would be “breaking the ground” for phase two next year.

While the entire hospital has been fully operational throughout the development period, Dr Collins believed it might have been a mistake to redevelop the hospital.

“It is very difficult to redevelop a site you are working on. It is hard for staff, children and families and it also increases costs,” she said.

Dr Collins said there was an opportunity about 25 years ago to develop a hospital on a different site but her predecessors decided not to move.

“It was possibly a mistake but one just has to live with it,” she said.

“We were very constrained in a city site but we were able to do it. It has been hard work and it has cost more money. But we did it because of what was already invested in that site that could not be refunded.”

The hospital has 330 in-patient beds but also has a “patients’ hotel” with about 40 bed spaces as well as a lot of daycare facilities.

When redevelopment work is complete the hospital will have up to 350 acute beds.

Redevelopment was considered to be the right option because the hospital was in a very accessible part of London. Dr Collins said there was not much parking space but it could be found for families who need it in the surrounding streets.