Birmingham Children's Hospital

Facilities

It provides general and emergency health care services to children in Birmingham, the West Midlands and beyond. It specialises in liver transplantation, cardiac, neonatal surgery, burns treatment, renal care and leukeamia research. Birmingham Children's also hosts the West Midlands Regional Centre for Cleft Lip and Palate, providing a multidisciplinary service for cleft patients, including speech & language therapy, dental, orthodontics, maxillofacial, plastic surgery and psychology. It is currently the only hospital in the UK to carry out intestinal transplants in children.

The Birmingham Children's Hospital is a Grade A locally listed building.

A helicopter landing pad is marked near the road in front of the hospital. When it is used, police officers encircle the area and prevent vehicles from moving along the road until the helicopter has departed and the patient taken into the hospital.

In 2007, a new extension designed by RPS Group was opened. The modern extension houses a burns unit, one of three such centres of excellence in the country. As well as this, it contains an outpatients department, a neo-natal Unit, a burns ward and a burns operating theatre, as well as additional classrooms for the Education Centre, allowing children to continue their education whilst undergoing medium to long term care in the hospital.

A brand-new £1 million research facility has been built at the Hospital, in a joint venture with The Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility. The Hospital also hosts a Teenage Cancer Trust ward build jointly with the TCT.

The trust leads a consortium of organisations called Forward Thinking Birmingham which has been commissioned to provide mental health services for young people in the city up to the age of 25 from April 2016. Services for adults were previously provided by Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Management

The Trust became a Foundation Trust in 2007.

The current Chief Executive is Sarah-Jane Marsh, who is married to former NHS England Chief Executive David Nicholson. She was appointed Chief Executive of Birmingham Women's NHS Foundation Trust with effect from 1 July 2015. She will manage both trusts. She is to review the trust's rebuilding plans, and will consider a range of options, including rebuilding with the children’s hospital, and a standalone solution. If the trusts agree to rebuild on a single site, a merger would be considered. The trust agreed in July 2016 that it would merge with the Womens' Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in 2017.

History

It opened in 1862 as the Birmingham and Midland Free Hospital for Sick Children at 138–9 Steelhouse Lane. It moved to a new site on Ladywood Road in 1917. A charity concert was held called "Heart Beat 86" at the National Exhibition Centre, featuring George Harrison and raising money for the hospital.

In 1998 the hospital returned to Steelhouse Lane, to the buildings previously used by the General Hospital, as the Diana, Princess of Wales Children's Hospital. This name has been increasingly sidelined, and there is currently no mention of this anywhere in the hospital entrance. Instead, the name 'Birmingham Children's Hospital' is preferred.

Performance

The Hospital treats nearly 250,000 children a year from all over the UK.

It was named by the Health Service Journal as one of the top hundred NHS trusts to work for in 2015. At that time it had 3236 full-time equivalent staff and a sickness absence rate of 3.39%. 89% of staff recommend it as a place for treatment and 74% recommended it as a place to work.

The Trust's Professor Anita Macdonald, Consultant Paediatric Dietitian was awarded an OBE for services to Dietetics in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2015.