Children's hospital to lose 25 beds

Significant cutbacks, including the closure of a 25-bed surgical unit, have been announced by the State's main children's hospital.

Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, in Crumlin, Dublin overspent by €2.4 million last year, and requires savings of more than €900,000 a month to meet its budget.

In a statement yesterday, the hospital confirmed one ward had closed, thereby reducing its bed capacity by 10 per cent. If the 25-bed unit remains closed until the end of the year, it will mean 2,000 fewer procedures taking place, given an average stay of four days for each child.

The hospital said that while it would try to protect specialist services "we must nonetheless look to curtail costs and ensure that resources currently available are effectively directed to patient care". Among the cutback measures, which the hospital described as "proposals", are no Sunday elective admissions, the possible temporary closure of a second ward, and shutting theatre at 5.30 p.m. A review of temporary contract and planned new posts is also to take place, as are possible staff reductions.

Medical staff are said to be enraged by the cutbacks. The surgical ward closure, which began on Monday, mostly affects general surgery and neurology patients. These are now being directed to other wards including the cardiac and burns units.

In it statement, the hospital said its 2003 budget allocation from the Eastern Regional Health Authority was €78.4m, an increase of €800,000 on last year. When the overrun of €2.4m was subtracted, the hospital was left with €76m "to cope with the services previously provided, for hospital development already approved by the ERHA and cost of inflation. Currently the hospital believes that we are short a total of €7.4m . . . almost 10 per cent."

Mr Karl Anderson, chairman of the New Crumlin Hospital Group, a parents-led lobby group, said the cutbacks reflect "an ongoing pattern of gross neglect of our largest paediatric hospital which has been starved of proper funds for decades".