Madam, – David Fitzgerald (October 8th) paints a picture of Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin as a hospital which places the employment of administrators over the needs of sick children. This is not the picture of Our Lady’s seen on a daily basis by the sick children and their families that we care for. Therefore I feel duty bound to set the record straight.
Mr Fitzgerald and your readers might be interested to know that Our Lady’s has consistently had the lowest percentage of administrative/ management staff of any voluntary hospital in the country. As part of our recent cost containment programme the number of administrative/ management staff employed in the hospital has been reduced by a further 2.6 per cent this year and by over 6 per cent in the past two years, this at a time when the hospital’s activity and complexity continues to increase.
Mr Fitzgerald proposes that over recent years Our Lady’s increase in patient numbers has been modest. The facts are that in the five-year period to 2008 we had a 29 per cent increase in children treated as day cases, a 23 per cent increase in our outpatient attendances, a 33 per cent increase in our patient operations and a 21 per cent increase in the number of children treated in our intensive care unit where we care for many of the country’s sickest children.
Despite the current challenging financial climate, the picture I see every day is a community of staff of all disciplines committed to providing the best possible care to the sick children whom we are privileged to serve. I believe it is a picture widely recognised by the children and their families attending Our Lady’s. – Yours, etc,