Paediatric services: A team of consultants is to be paid up to €180,000 by the Health Service Executive for five weeks work, writes Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent
McKinsey & Co have been appointed to draw up a report, based on best international practice, on whether highly specialised paediatric services in the State should be provided at one or more locations.
The company, was informed on December 23rd by the HSE that it won the contract to draw up the report which it must have completed by the end of this month. It will be paid up to €36,000 a week for its services.
Last October following controversy on the millions spent by the State on outside consultants to work on the PPARS computer payroll system for the health service, the development of which has now been suspended, the Minister for Health Mary Harney said there had been an "excessive dependence" on consultants.
She announced that in future the Department of Health would have to secure her specific sanction before commissioning external consultants. It is not clear if Ms Harney's approval was sought by the HSE for outside consultants to carry out the review of paediatric services, but she has already spoken about the fact that the review is under way.
At present, highly-specialised or tertiary paediatric services are provided at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin and Temple Street Children's Hospital. It has been suggested they should be provided on a single site in the best interests of patients.
However, McKinsey & Co has not been asked to state the precise location at which these services should be provided in the future. This contentious issue is to be decided by the HSE, after it receives the consultants' report, a spokesman for the HSE confirmed. "The HSE will then decide where the services should be located in consultation with the relevant parties," he said.
The document inviting management consultancy services to tender for completion of the report on paediatric services states the consultants appointed are only required to identify whether tertiary paediatric services should in future be provided at one or more locations, as well as the number of beds and the diagnostic facilities required for tertiary paediatric and secondary paediatric services needs in Dublin. It also says "a maximum allocation of €180,000 before VAT has been assigned for the completion of this project".
The document also points out that Crumlin hospital is "the primary provider of tertiary level paediatric services although some tertiary services are also provided" at Temple Street and that secondary level paediatric services are provided in these two hospitals and also at the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght.
"The Dublin paediatric hospitals have indicated that they aspire to the concept that in the long-term, a single tertiary paediatric hospital represents the ideal model for the delivery of tertiary level paediatric care in Ireland. The Comhairle na nOspidéal Report (1998) on Paediatric Surgery Services recommended that all specialised paediatric surgery be carried out on one site. It has not to date proven possible to implement the recommendations of the Report on Paediatric Services (1998)," it says.