You can hardly blame him that he got it wrong – Dr. Shmerling, CEO of Children’s Hospital Colorado, that is.
After all, this is what the Mater Misericordia University Hospital (MMUH)’s website says:-
“The Mater Campus comprises:-
- A Medical School affiliated to University College Dublin and the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.”
In the video tape message from Dr Shmerling , carried on the Department of Health’s website and played at the Press Conference in Government Buildings launching the “Independent ” Review on 06/07/2011, he says ” A number of years ago we faced a similar decision [as the NPH] about co-locating on to a University Campus . We made that decision with absolutely no regrets now. As you can see from some of these pictures, our new hospital is co-located in great proximity to research labs and to the University Hospital which allows us to collaborate and to facilitate and accelerate discovery, looking at ways to treat children.”
Yes , Dr Shmerling, we know that in 2007 you moved to a wonderful 48 acre campus for the children’s hospital on the outskirts of metropolitan Denver, beside the University of Colorado Hospital and the University of Colorado School of Medicine. We know the University is home to world-class education and research facilities and that doctors from the prestigious Department of Pediatrics work there. We also know that when you left ‘downtown’ to go to the University campus you opened a satellite branch of the Children’s hospital in 2007 ‘downtown’ in St. Joseph’s hospital, to serve the local community.
What you, however, may not know is that MMUH is not a medical school, it is just an, albeit excellent, academic adult teaching hospital affiliated to University College Dublin whose medical school, educational facilities and research labs are several kilometres away in Belfield in the south suburbs of Dublin. Furthermore MMUH, despite its website claim, is not affiliated to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) Medical School.
Perhaps, applying the same journalistic latitude as is evident on the MMUH website, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda might call itself a medical school affiliated to the RCSI, or Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin should describe itself as a medical school affiliated to University College Dublin, Trinity College and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – as students from all three Dublin medical schools attend it. It can even boast the National Children’s Research Centre on campus.
Funny thing, isn’t it, too, that the McKinsey Assessment criteria ( see the Future page on this website) missed the importance of listing Maternity hospital adjacency for excellence in neonatal care and omitted mentioning the desirability of co-location with a medical school University campus, simply concentrating on adult hospital adjacency. But – there again, as we say in Ireland – perhaps such considerations were excluded from its brief – we wonder why.
NCHA will have more to say on the subject of the “Independent ” Review, stay posted. But for now, we repeat – Let’s change the site, let’s get it right. For our children.