Sydney Children’s Hospital still waiting for promised $10m
The fight over cardiac resources between Sydney’s two children’s hospitals was supposed to be resolved — but six months, the feud rages on and funding promised to help resolve the issue is yet to be seen.
NSW
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Frustration has again boiled over six months after NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard announced $10 million to restore cardiac services at Sydney Children’s Hospital (SCH).
Medical staff at the SCH have now accused the implementation committee set up to oversee the restoration of services as “stacked in favour of the Children’s Hospital Westmead” and fear the issue will never be resolved.
“Nothing has happened, nothing has been achieved and zero of the $10 million promised has been seen at SCH,” Dr Michael Solomon, chair of the senior medical staff council said.
Last Tuesday, 81 staff members voted “independent SCH cardiology and cardiac surgery departments need to be re-established immediately with recruitment of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons fully based at Randwick with our own Head of Department” and that “the Ministerial decision of reinstating routine elective and emergency cardiac surgery at SCH must be honoured.”
“Brad Hazzard should hang his head in shame as he has willingly let down the children and parents of NSW by allowing this process to drag on when children’s lives are at risk, and the safety of a well-established tertiary children’s hospital has been put at risk,” Dr Solomon said.
Doctors at Westmead have long argued that patients would have better outcomes if cardiac services were centralised there, while Randwick doctors have argued that losing cardiac surgery from their hospital would put children’s lives at risk.
The feud erupted publicly two years ago and led to the SCH voting to leave the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, the stepping-down of the network chair, the loss of a world-renowned cardiac surgeon, a roundtable and an eventual review by Professor Richard Henry that found a single site for cardiac “seemed neither logical nor feasible”.
“NSW Health has determined that paediatric cardiac surgery and cardiology will be delivered at the networked Westmead and Randwick campuses,” Mr Hazzard said in January off the back of the Henry Review.
The Ministry of Health chose the implementation committee, chaired by Professor Villis Marshall.
“They have taken three clinicians from Randwick and six from Westmead and it is overwhelmingly stacked with people who have openly said the decision is wrong,” Dr Solomon said.
“They’ve got cardiologists and a cardiac surgeon on the committee who signed a letter to (Premier) Gladys Berejiklian in March saying the decision will lead to lives being lost and they need to reverse the decision.
“They’ve stacked the committee with people dead against the decision, so how can the committee work?”
In a statement, a NSW Health spokeswoman said: “The dedicated $10 million additional funding for equipment and infrastructure will be made available to support implementation when the work of the Panel is finalised.
“The Panel needs to be supported as it works toward the safe provision of paediatric cardiac services to the children of NSW and it is important that all parties work together collegially and positively to ensure this.”
Alex and Stephanie Cornish, whose baby son’s life was saved by CHW surgeons, are supporters of the one site centre of surgical excellence.
The eastern suburbs couple believe the decision to split resources is wrong and have contributed to an online group set up to protest the decision.
“We are parents of a child who has had heart surgery and we are fundamentally concerned a decision has been made that clearly is not evidence-based, not based on the opinion of experts, and we are concerned it will not lead to optimised outcomes for children with congenital heart disease,” Mrs Cornish said.
Their son Johnny required surgery at three days of age in 2018 and faced major complications.
“When the going got tough post-operatively, we saw first-hand what a collaborative team does,” she said.
“My feeling is if he had been in a lower volume unit, and if the surgeons weren’t as experienced, we would have lost him, so we feel very strongly.”
Originally published as Sydney Children’s Hospital still waiting for promised $10m