It is Government policy, as reiterated in the National Maternity Strategy, to co-locate stand-alone maternity hospitals with adult acute hospitals. Co-location of maternity services with adult services provides mothers with access to a full range of medical and support services should the need arise, in line with international best practice. In order to be successful in terms of enabling immediate access in an emergency, co-location requires physical adjacencies and specific corridor-linkages from one hospital to the other. The availability of these services helps ensure the delivery of an optimum, safe service, particularly for high-risk mothers and babies.
The National Maternity Hospital (NMH) will be the first of our remaining stand-alone maternity hospitals to be co-located as its current infrastructure is recognised as no longer being fit for purpose. The co-location of the NMH with St Vincent’s University Hospital will make the wide range of general medical, surgical and diagnostic facilities on the Elm Park campus available to any woman who needs to be transferred from the adjacent maternity hospital, resulting in care provision that is far superior to the existing situation.
It should be noted that, women giving birth will sometimes – and thankfully, only in limited numbers – need emergency care and Level 3 ICU and pregnant women will often need multidisciplinary care, for instance if they have co-morbidities.
Annually, several hundred pregnant women require transfer to St Vincent’s University Hospital as inpatients or outpatients for treatment that is not available at Holles Street. Annually, a small number of critically ill women are transferred to receive intensive care not available on site at Holles Street.
The new co-located hospital will provide spacious facilities in a modern campus approach to healthcare, where a range of medical entities operate in close proximity to improve patient care and patient outcomes. The design of the new NMH has been developed to the highest standards to support best possible outcomes. For example, the design locates NMH theatres adjacent to the Level 3 ICU at St Vincent’s University Hospital, specifically to facilitate immediate transfer in the small number of cases where this is needed.
