The Government has been gifted an unexpected opportunity to change the narrative around the much-delayed national children’s hospital and they should take it. The current position – as set out by the Minister for Health last month – is that fingers crossed the €2.24 billion facility adjacent to St James’s Hospital in Dublin will sort of open before the end of the year.
“If the hospital is handed over at the end of April, and if everything goes well with the commissioning period ... then that would be my expectation that patients would be in the hospital by December,” Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told the Oireachtas health committee in February.
The December target looks aspirational and would appear to have more to do with not admitting that it will be 2027 before the hospital opens than anything grounded in reality.
Rather than keep up this charade, the next time the Minister – or anyone else for that matter – is asked when the hospital will open, they should simply reply that it will open when it is safe for it to do so and not before. If anyone complains, point them in the direction of Glasgow.
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A four-year inquiry into the botched opening of a “state‑of‑the‑art, world-class facility intended to transform care for children in Scotland” is now its final stages. Last month, the National Health Service Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) admitted in its closing statement to the inquiry that it opened the £852 million (€987 million) campus “too early”, just months before the British general election in 2015. “It was not ready,” it said.
The NHSGGC also said “pressure was applied to open the hospital on time and on budget”. The source of the pressure was not specified but seems obvious given the proximity to the election.
The consequences of this were catastrophic and the bungled opening has been linked to numerous cases of infection at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Children and seven deaths, including that of 10-year-old Milly Main in 2017.
The NHSGGC told the inquiry that it accepted that, on the balance of probabilities, there was a causal connection between some infections suffered by patients and the hospital environment, particularly the water system.
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The problems with the hospital environment have in turn been linked at the inquiry to unresolved issues with the ventilation and water systems when the hospital was handed over by the contractor. The inquiry also heard that the commissioning of the water system was inadequate.
The political fallout has been equally severe. The families of the affected patients have claimed the flaws “killed and poisoned our loved ones”. They have accused the health board of “gross misconduct, incompetence and dishonesty”, which they say, “led to the deaths and serious illnesses of our loved ones”.
“Your army of legal advisers and press spindoctors worked over years to undermine us, despite your best efforts, here we are today, and you must face a reckoning,” they said in a statement January.
The inquiry heard evidence from a paediatric oncologist who was asked to investigate 118 episodes of bacterial infection in 85 children who received treatment for blood disease, cancer or related conditions at the hospital. He said he felt pressurised to change his report by staff who suggested he came to the “wrong conclusion”.
The blame game is well under way. The contractor has insisted the hospital was delivered “on time, on budget, and fully certified” before opening in 2015. The current first minister of Scotland John Swinney – who was finance minister in 2015 – and his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon have denied any political pressure was applied on the hospital to open before it was ready.
The NHSGGC subsequently clarified its position saying that “there were pressures to open ‘on time and on budget’ from within NHSGGC, with the chief executive at the time confirming that he would have sought updates on that basis”.
[ Bam commits to April 30th completion date for children’s hospital, says MinisterOpens in new window ]
The final report is of the inquiry is – by coincidence – due before the end of 2026 and may shed some more light. But Carroll MacNeill and her colleagues don’t need to wait until then to realise that no matter how much flak the Government is going to take between now and the day the ribbon is finally cut on the new hospital, it won’t even come close the firestorm that will break out if they preside over the opening of an unsafe hospital.
The pressure will come on the Government at the end of April when BAM – the contractor building the hospital – is due to hand it over for commissioning. If that doesn’t happen, then the December deadline is pretty much out the window.
It will be a big deal, but it shouldn’t be. Having waited the best part of 10 years for a new children’s hospital we can probably hang on a bit longer for a safe one.
