Hospital ‘must plan for under-18s surge’

IRELAND’S €800 million National Paediatric Hospital could face significant difficulties unless its planned capacity takes account of the country’s surging under-18 population, experts have warned.

Speaking at support group Children in Hospital Ireland’s (CHI) annual lecture, specialists from the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children — which caters for a population base of almost five million patients — said if the proposed facility planned for today’s needs instead of those in the future it would soon become outdated and overcrowded.

Under plans confirmed by Health Minister Mary Harney in 2006, Ireland’s three children’s hospitals — Temple Street Children’s University Hospital, Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, and the National Children’s Hospital in Tallaght — will be amalgamated into a single 380-bed facility at the Mater Hospital by 2012.

The service is expected to radically improve access and treatment times for children, with its location beside the adult Mater Hospital also allowing for better co-operation between children and adult specialities.

However, while accepting the benefits of the initiative, Geraldine Johnston, women’s and children’s division manager at Bristol Royal Hospital, said any reform would become irrelevant unless increasing population levels were accounted for.

And pointing to her own facility, which had to increase capacity after opening to cope with increased patient numbers, she added that it was essential for Ireland’s paediatric service to build for future demands.

“In Bristol last year we had 5,500 day cases, 10,000 electives, 7,000 emergency admissions, 10,000 new outpatients, 26,000 follow-up outpatients, and 29,000 admissions to A&E.

“We have a direct patient cohort in Bristol of 300,000 and about five million in the wider area.

“In 1998 we were already too small for what was in the 1990 plans and the cost to change that was stg£35m (€40.5m). Any new service like this has to take account of what might happen in the future,” she said.

Ireland’s National Paediatric Hospital will act as a centre of excellence for child patients nationwide.

* Further information on support group Children in Hospital Ireland at www.childreninhospital.ie