Errors at delayed children's hospital 'bewildering' say parents

Safety concerns stopped the opening of Edinburgh's Sick Kids hospital in 2019

Mistakes which led to a 20-month delay in the full opening of a children's hospital have been branded "bewildering" by parents and families.

The opening of the children's hospital in Edinburgh was postponed in 2019 when last-minute inspections found safety concerns over its ventilation systems.

The issues surrounding the delayed the Sick Kids hospital opening are being examined by a public inquiry.

Closing submissions to the inquiry have been made by affected families.

They question why a mistake in a spreadsheet which set in motion a series of events that led to Edinburgh's Royal Hospital for Children and Young People being delayed was not picked up by the numerous experts involved.

A report commissioned by NHS Lothian, at the time, said the mistake was a "collective failure" and the Sick Kids hospital fully opened in July 2021 after safety concerns were fixed at a cost of more than £16m.

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Thompsons Solicitors put in a closing submission to Scotland's hospitals inquiry on behalf of patients and families affected by the Edinburgh Sick Kids situation.

It said: "It was clear from the evidence that we have heard that NHS Lothian failed to make the key requirements for the ventilation system clear to those who were bidding for the construction contract.

"Not surprisingly, NHS Lothian's failure led to confusion among all involved parties. It is utterly astonishing that patient safety was dealt with in such a slack and haphazard fashion."

"There can be no doubt that it was for NHS Lothian to specify, with absolute clarity and accuracy, the ventilation requirements for the patient rooms within their hospital. They failed to do so."

The statement adds that is "bewildering" that an "obvious human error" in the ventilation system design was not picked up on, and that it is "remarkable and inexcusable" that how the mistake occurred has not been properly explained, they claim, to the inquiry to date.

The Sick Kids' critical care rooms need 10 air changes per hour to comply with ventilation guidelines designed to control infections.

Complying with these guidelines was in the project's contract but the rooms were completed with a ventilation system that only did four air changes per hour and this was the main reason the project was halted at the last minute.

A spreadsheet called the "environmental matrix" and dated from 2012 contained the "four air changes" error for critical care.

An independent review in 2020 concluded there had been a "human error" in copying across the four-bedded room generic ventilation criteria into the critical care room detail in this spreadsheet.

'No ambiguity'

NHS Lothian's closing statement to the inquiry said it made it "overwhelmingly obvious" to those bidding for the project that what was being built had to comply with all the relevant guidance.

It added: "Read fairly and in the round, there was no ambiguity or lack of clarity in the procurement and contractual documentation."

The issues surrounding the opening of the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh are being examined by a public inquiry

The health board said there was a "clear and overriding requirement" on IHSL - the private consortium which designed, built, and financed the facility - to build a hospital that complied with ventilation guidance.

On the spreadsheet error, the health board said that "with the benefit of hindsight, it is accepted that NHS Lothian may have been better served by not providing the environmental matrix at all" but added it was only meant to provide tenderers with a "starter for ten".

The health board's director of finance Craig Marriott said "at no point" were patients put at any risk.

He said: "Throughout the design and build process NHS Lothian reiterated repeatedly to the building's owners and their construction contractors that its technical specifications, including those relating to ventilation, must comply with national standards.

"Multiple instances of this insistence and of the importance placed on ventilation in particular, given its role in infection control, are well documented and referenced in contemporaneous record and in NHS Lothian's submission to the Scottish hospitals inquiry."

The inquiry, which has cost £11.2m since it was launched three years ago, has still to hold a hearing on the former Health Secretary Jeane Freeman's decision to delay the hospital's opening.

This hearing is expected to take place in the first three months of next year.

The inquiry is also examining issues at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and further hearings about that site are also expected to resume next year.