THE HEAD of a team established by the Health Service Executive only last month to ensure greater co-ordination and sharing of resources between the three Dublin children’s hospitals is stepping down, it has emerged.
HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm announced at a meeting of the Oireachtas health committee on October 7th that John O’Brien had been appointed to the key role.
He said Mr O’Brien, the former chief executive of St James’s Hospital who moved to the HSE to be one of Prof Drumm’s advisers and for a time head of the HSE’s national hospitals office, would also ensure the three existing children’s hospitals at Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght would be prepared for the move to the Mater site when the new national children’s hospital is built in 2014.
The Irish Times understands that following the announcement Mr O’Brien made contact with staff working in the paediatric hospitals and was arranging to consult them in his new role.
However, in recent days there has been a change of plan with Mr O’Brien indicating he wished to leave the HSE. The HSE said he decided to retire at the end of October. In a statement it said: “John O’Brien has been involved in the paediatric hospital project since its inception in 2006 and was therefore the ideal person to take on the project to manage the relationships between the HSE and the acute paediatrics community.
“Separately Mr O’Brien had been contemplating retirement for some considerable time and recently made a personal decision to retire at the end of this month . He regrets that he will not continue to be part of this important project.”
The HSE said, however, that the need for the team to oversee greater co-ordination between the three paediatric hospitals in Dublin remains. “The HSE is proceeding to put the team in place and will be appointing a team leader in due course,” it said.
Mr O’Brien was at the centre of controversy in 2007 during the Portlaoise breast cancer misdiagnosis scandal when he revealed at an Oireachtas committee that breast ultrasounds on 97 women who attended Portlaoise hospital were being reviewed. At the time it was only known 3,000 mammograms were being reviewed. The 97 women, Minister for Health Mary Harney, the Department of Health and Prof Drumm were unaware of the ultrasound review before his disclosure in public at the health committee meeting.