NMH

NMH | 2024 6 Governance 2 024 was another memorable year at NMH. Once again despite the ongoing difficulties with the current aging buildings on Holles Street all our staff provided quality care to our patients and continued to administer to the varying disparate needs of our patients. Listening to patients and hearing their concerns continues to be a quality imbued in every group within NMH staff. Imagination and inspiration are present in abundance in the NMH with the continued focus of improving patient care and experience and also furthering the practice of medicine through training and research all focussed on providing better maternity, gynaecology and neonatal care for our patients and future generations. The positivity and camaraderie that staff consistently demonstrate throughout the Hospital, in every circumstance, continues to impress me and this is evident in the calibre of people we attract to work in our Hospital. In every category of staff the quality of our employees, in spite of the site limitations, clearly evidences the outstanding reputation of NMH both nationally and internationally. Unfortunately, like many other hospitals, particularly in the Dublin region, in recent years we have experienced difficulty in recruiting staff into a number of clinical areas including midwifery, sonography, medical scientists. This is a growing and concerning trend and while the issues are no doubt multi-faceted it certainly appears that accommodation costs are one factor. It is imperative that we retain staff and source new hires for succession to ensure we retain our excellent team. The number of deliveries has remained reasonably static during 2024. Once again an analysis of the data indicates that 48.6% of our births are to women aged 35 years or older and 11.7% of those are aged over 40 which can lead to additional complications. The new services that we have introduced in recent years continue to grow and Deputy Chairman's Report develop and the demand for these services is ever increasing. We continue to expand and evolve services for women in many areas such as fertility, genetics, menopause, pain management, psychosexual counselling, perinatal mental health, neonatal additional therapies, endometriosis to highlight just a few of the recent areas of expansion. As one of the six national hubs for the roll out of the public fertility services this particular area is likely to expand in the coming years with additional services being offered with the support of National Women and Infants Health Programme and the Department of Health. Our goal is to continue to provide quality care for our patients and to provide them with choice and options for all the services that they may require. We will continue to do this with the assistance of the National Women and Infants Health Programme (NWIHP) and the Dublin South East Hospital Group (DSE). We continue to be heavily involved in pursuing the implementation of the National Maternity Strategy and the rollout of Sláintecare with NMH being the major hub in the Dublin South East Region for the provision of women's and neonatal care. During this year there were significant milestones in relation to the project to co-locate the NMH to the Elm Park Campus and specifically the issue of the tender for the main works to the market. In addition, tenders were awarded for Framework 3 and other enabling works under framework 2 continued throughout the year. These enabling works will ensure that the site is prepared for the main contractor. The work of the senior teams was very much focussed on new governance arrangements for the next phase (the build phase) of the project with various proposals for the governance structures discussed and reviewed in the latter months of 2024. We continue to engage with HSE Estates, St Vincent's University Hospital (SVUH) Pat McCann, Deputy Chairman.

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