Doctors Raise New Fears Over Children’s Hospital Plans

Five of Scotland’s most respected doctors have raised new concerns over the building to replace the country’s biggest children’s hospital.

The clinicians are posing serious questions about detailed plans for Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children’s relocation to the site of the city’s sprawling Southern General campus.

The men, led by Yorkhill’s retired chairman, Professor Forrester Cockburn, make a thinly veiled warning that the views of clinicians are not being heard by officials planning the new hospital.

And they question why the new building, which will have a lifespan of at least 60 years, is to be grafted on to the Southern’s ageing maternity wing.

The doctors – considered among the most eminent in Scottish paediatric medicine – spell out their concerns in a letter in today’s Herald.

Signatories to the letter include surgeon Professor Dan Young; neurologist Professor John Stephenson; consultant paediatrician Dr Krishna Goel; and Dr Robert Logan, retired head of Yorkhill’s team of scientists.

They have backed overall plans to move Yorkhill, including the Queen Mother’s Hospital, its maternity unit, despite early misgivings, saying the relocation was “a chance to create a brand new world-class national facility”.

However, they question the way in which the project is being delivered.

“We have been made aware of some of the anxieties produced by this lack of communication with clinical staff,” the doctors write. “We take this opportunity to ask that they are fully involved in planning, will be listened to, and that the whole process is open to public scrutiny before more scarce Health Service money is used to create facilities of a lower quality than those currently enjoyed at Yorkhill.”

Senior clinicians at Yorkhill have already told The Herald of their fears about proposals for the new children’s hospital. Doctors are concerned over what they regard as a real cut in bed numbers. Others worry that the old Southern maternity will have to be pulled down within 20 years, leaving the hospital without a live-saving physical link to the place where sick babies are born.

Prof Cockburn and his colleagues pressed NHS officials for an answer to those concerns.

NHS officials claim the new hospital will meet the gold standard of care for mothers, children and babies.

Thanks to a new multi-million-pound extension to the Southern maternity unit, the new children’s hospital will have the same kind of link between maternity and paediatrics enjoyed at Yorkhill.

NHS officials yesterday suggested that questions from Prof Cockburn and his colleagues were misguided.

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, which is responsible for relocation plans, said: “To describe our plans for the new maternity unit at the Southern General site as a refurbishment’ is widely misleading.

“Only last month we announced a £28m plan which will see brand new buildings on the Southern site.

“Claims that health service money is being used to create facilities of a lower quality than those currently enjoyed at Yorkhill are wide of the mark.

“This significant new build programme substantially expands on the original refurbishment plans for the Southern General maternity unit.

“The new children’s hospital will be integrated fully with the new maternity unit, and a brand new adult hospital, in order to provide the best possible care for new babies and their mothers.”

The spokeswoman also claimed staff had been widely consulted about the changes.