Maternity hospital governance row 'a risk to women'

Pregnant women will face delays and potential health risks if the National Maternity Hospital is run separately from St Vincent's hospital after relocation, it has been claimed.

A failure to create a single governance system for the two hospitals when the maternity hospital moves to St Vincent's will waste taxpayers' money and could increase the risk of costly litigation, according to Prof Michael Keane, clinical director of St Vincent's.

Prof Keane, writing in today's Irish Times, says St Vincent's is prepared to gradually phase out the current mastership system in Holles Street over five to 10 years, rather than abolishing it immediately.

The NMH, in its first public comment on the row between the two institutions, said in a statement yesterday it was “committed to seeking a resolution of the current impasse and developing a world-class hospital for women and infants at the St Vincent’s site”.

It declined to speculate on other options “at this stage”.

Patient care

Prof Keane said that if the two hospitals were to operate as separately governing entities, as advocated by Holles Street, decisions about patient care would be made by two separate medical teams. Women would have to move back and forth between the two hospitals to receive care at different stages of their treatment, as consultants would operate only within one hospital. He warned of “grey areas” over the transfer of responsibility for patient care and said this would result in delays and potential risks to pregnant women and their children.

Dr Peter Boylan, chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians, said a compromise should be reached on the issue.

Ethical problems

Dr Boylan, a former master of the NMH, raised concerns about the maternity hospital being answerable to the board of the St Vincent’s Group, which is governed by the Religious Sisters of Charity.

This posed ethical problems in terms of maternity care, such as IVF and tubal ligation, he said. “Despite what’s being said, they can’t do a tubal ligation in St Vincent’s Hospital at present. The word that’s been used is you can if it is ‘clinically indicated’.

“That rang a bell for me. In the 1990s when the National Maternity Hospital was doing tubal ligations I was summoned to the Archbishop’s Palace and I was carpeted and told we could not do those procedures unless it was ‘clinically indicated’.

“These things need to be a matter between a patient and a doctor. They wouldn’t be under the proposed governance.”

People before Profit and Labour Senator Kevin Humphreys both called on Minister for Health Leo Varadkar to intervene in the dispute.