In response,the hospital’s medical staff council wrote a letter to Park saying they were “extremely saddened” by the decision to strip Randwick of its ability to perform heart surgeries on paediatric patients and further concentrate resources at Westmead.
Cardiac bypass surgery is rare,and the procedure has not been performed at Randwick in two and a half years.
But staff are concerned outsourcing the procedure altogether will impact all departments because they will no longer have the expertise to offer extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO),a different procedure where the blood is pumped and oxygenated outside the body,bypassing the heart and lungs of critically ill patients.
“Nowhere else in the world does a children’s hospital maintain an ECMO service without a cardiac surgery program,” they wrote. “Thus,this ECMO support will dissolve over time directly because of your lack of support for the cardiac surgical service at SCH Randwick.”
The doctors said families expected the hospital to have all the services to care for critically ill children,but the decision would mean they would either have to be transferred to Westmead or wait for a specialist to arrive from that hospital.
“To not have those services exposes vulnerable children to significant risk,” they wrote.