The new children’s hospital is the central cog of the National Model of Care for child healthcare in Ireland and will deliver on the core principles of the National Model of Care. A network of care with a new children’s hospital at the epicentre will reach every community in Ireland through satellites and regional centres to deliver comprehensive paediatric care for Ireland’s children and young people. The proposed new children’s hospital development is the most significant capital investment project ever undertaken in healthcare in Ireland. Much of the current infrastructure in the existing children’s hospitals is not compatible with contemporary healthcare needs and the current duplication and triplication of some services across the three paediatric services in Dublin is unsustainable.
The new children’s hospital located on a shared campus with St. James’s Hospital will bring together the three existing children’s hospitals in a modern custom designed building to deliver the best care and treatments for Ireland’s sickest children. Co-location of the new children’s hospital with St. James’s Hospital, a model 4 hospital, provides access to the greatest breadth and depth of adult subspecialties to optimally support the new children’s hospital. Its completion will result in better clinical outcomes and increased operational efficiency, as well as significantly enhancing the experience of service for children, young people and their families; and staff.
As part of the new model of care for paediatric services, the new hospital is also being created in conjunction with two satellites centres at Tallaght Hospital and Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown to provide local paediatric care. Subject to planning approval, the proposed satellite centres at Connolly and Tallaght Hospitals will open in 2018, providing urgent care and better local access to general paediatric & trauma orthopaedics OPD services, chronic disease management, diagnostics and to support community and home based services.
The new children’s hospital will provide specialist care for Ireland’s sickest children. It will also replace the hospitals of Crumlin and Temple Street as the local hospital for children who live in the city and within the M50. Day-to-day (secondary paediatric care and urgent care) hospital needs of children from the Greater Dublin Area (County Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow) will be catered for in the new Paediatric Outpatients and Urgent Care Centre (CHI at Tallaght Hospital and CHI at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown) where consultant-led emergency care will be delivered. These urgent care units will have observation beds and state-of-the art diagnostic imaging and x-ray equipment. CHI at Connolly opened in July 2019 and CHI at Tallaght is due to open later this year (2021).
Local and regional hospitals around the country will also play a very important part in delivering the new national Model of Care.
The new children’s hospital will be Ireland’s first public digital hospital.