Co-location priorities not in St. James

The information below was received by NCHA under the Freedom of Information Acts.

FOI information:-  This  excerpt (in blue text below) is from a “Prioritisation exercise for the collocation of adult hospital specialities with a tertiary paediatric hospital in Dublin.. Proposed prioritisation of clinical service collocation” prepared by a  subgroup of the Task Group on NPH Location 2006 and presented to the Group at  a meeting March 2006. Location Report – Report of the Joint Health Service Executive / Department of Health and Children Task Group to advise on the optimum location of the new national paediatric hospital, was published  May 2006. The final report does not contain the list of priorities  identified by the Task Group subcommittee.

EXCERPT from Minutes of Meeting of Task Group on NPH Location, March 2006:-

“Priority 1a – Neurosurgery.  [NCHA Comment – is not in St. James’s]

Priority 1b     – no.1 – Transplant Surgery [NCHA comment – is not in St. James], no. 2 – Interventional Neuroradiology [NCHA comment – is not in St. James], no. 3 – Radiation Therapy [is in St. James], no.4 – Spinal Surgery [NCHA comment – is not in St. James]. no.5 – Cardiac Surgery. [NCHA comment -while an adult cardiac surgery department is in St. James’s that department has never been involved in paediatric cardiac surgery, which is carried out  in Crumlin with support technicians coming from the cardiac surgery department in the Mater.] 

Priority 1c    Those with a shared caseload, ease of consultant access –
ENT, Dermatology, Plastic surgery, Maxillo-facial surgery, Ophthalmic surgery, Orthopaedics, Urology.” END of Excerpt.

[ NCHA comment re Priority 1c specialities – all Urology in Crumlin hospital is performed by children’s specialists. With the exception of Maxillo-facial surgery the other specialities listed in Priority 1c are serviced in the main by consultants with a majority subspeciality commitment to paediatric practice. These consultants  have minor commitments to various adult hospitals – Mater, St Vincent’s(Elm Park), St. James’s, Beaumont, Tallaght. The amalgamation of the three children’s hospitals into the one National Children’s hospital will allow full time paediatric positions in these specialities. As currently obtains there are Temple St./Mater posts or Crumlin/ St.Vincent’s posts or Crumlin/Temple St./Mater posts etc. Gathering all the dispersed children’s work on one site will allow such historical geographic appointments to dissolve, to the benefit of children, as the National Children’s Hospital will have the volume of work to support full time paediatric specialists in these disciplines, joining the more than 25 specialities that already have full time paediatric specialists.

This FOI information is relevant given that we are now being told (Nov 2012) by a report leaked to RTE that the Dolphin Group favours St.James on medical [clinical] grounds. It appears to NCHA that the top priority services still required to be shared with an adult co-located hospital would over time more easily  transfer to the adult Connolly hospital (on 150 acre campus on the M50) from  Beaumont hospital (where they currently are) – adult neurosurgery, transplant surgery, spinal surgery, interventional neuroradiology – than for Beaumont to service the St.James’s site. Furthermore, one helipad only would be needed on the Connolly campus to serve the trilocated children’s, maternity and adult hospitals – unlike on the split James /Coombe site.