THE BOARD of one of Dublin’s three maternity hospitals has told the Health Service Executive (HSE) it would be prepared to sell its current site to finance a move to new premises.
The Coombe Women’s Hospital, which has serious infrastructural difficulties, has drawn up a plan which would see it co-locating with Tallaght hospital.
The plan, according to the Coombe’s master, Dr Chris Fitzpatrick, is supported by both Tallaght and St James’s Hospitals with which the Coombe shares staff and patients.
He said Tallaght was the appropriate site given the population to be served.
He told The Irish Times the plan had been devised since the Coombe made a submission last year to KPMG, the company contracted by the HSE to carry out an independent review of maternity services in the greater Dublin area and how they should be organised into the future. In its original submission to KPMG the Coombe said it wanted to relocate to the grounds of St James’s Hospital.
Dr Fitzpatrick said he had written to the HSE’s chief executive, Prof Brendan Drumm, and Minister for Health Mary Harney earlier this summer in relation to the new proposal. He said he asked the HSE to pass on the proposal to KPMG, which has now just completed its review.
Dr Fitzpatrick said he believed this was why the KPMG report still hadn’t been published and therefore criticism of its delay in reporting was unfair. He said he believed they were carrying out “due diligence”.
He added: “It has become fashionable for health professionals to criticise the HSE but we feel we have had an opportunity to articulate our view and we would have an expectation this may well be endorsed in the report.”
He said the worrying issue now in terms of the co-location was the economic downturn but he said the Coombe felt its move could be achieved in a value-for-money way. He said the Coombe hospital board was prepared to sell the site on which it is located to contribute to the building of a new hospital at Tallaght and he felt there was an opportunity for “significant revenue savings” by having services and staff shared on one site.
Asked what the Coombe site was worth, Dr Fitzpatrick said the site had been valued last year, but in the current climate he would be reluctant to say what it is valued at.
There was also, he said, €45 million worth of work to be done at the Coombe to address deficits but the hospital would restrict this spending if it knew it was moving.
Furthermore, he said the design for the new Cork University Maternity Hospital could be used as a template to reduce design fees and shorten the time to the move to Tallaght, which he anticipates could be completed if approved within five years.
Before the KPMG review began, the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street had an expectation it would move to St Vincent’s Hospital while the Rotunda Hospital was expected to move to the new single site national children’s hospital at the Mater, when it was built.
It is understood part of the delay with the KPMG report was the commissioning at a late stage of a study of population trends in each area.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said yesterday that the KPMG report had now been completed.
It said it was “currently communicating with key stakeholders seeking feedback on the review” and anticipates that it would be published in the coming weeks.