The IMO has long campaigned for and supported the development of children’s services and while it has now been agreed that Phase 1 of the development – the Urgent Care Centre in Connolly – will open on Wednesday it is a matter of considerable frustration that these services will not operate to the full extent of what was originally planned in the model of care agreed between consultants and the CHG.  The services will now be restricted to Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm due to the extreme difficult in recruiting Paediatric Emergency Medicine Consultants and Paediatric Radiology Consultants.   

 

Consultants have made every effort to work with CHG management to put in place a number of risk mitigations to allow the service to open on a restricted basis.  However unless and until the recruitment problem is sorted there can be no further expansion of children’s services at this centre or in terms of the broader development of satellite clinics and the new Children’s Hospital.

 

This recuitment problem is of the Government’s making and only the Government can resolve it.  The IMO insists that immediate engagement must take place to ensure we can properly plan and deliver a consultant delivered service for children and the wider population and put an end to the scandal of long waiting lists and the adverse affects this has on patients.