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Alder Hey and Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust are working in partnership to change and improve how neonatal services are delivered to families across the North West.
Together, we have formed the 'Liverpool Neonatal Partnership', focused on creating a single service and providing a safer service for young babies.
By working together within a partnership, we will be able to provide the very best neonatology and surgical expertise, ensuring the highest standards of care and the very best clinical outcomes. The Liverpool Neonatal Partnership is being led by a Senior Leadership Team and will be supported by specialist staff from both trusts, including consultant neonatologists, consultant neonatal surgeons, advanced nurse practitioners and specialist neonatal nurses.
Improvements have already been made to the way neonatal care is being delivered, including colleagues from both hospitals working more closely together across both sites. The Neonatal Unit at Liverpool Women’s Hospital has also been redeveloped and a Neonatal Intensive and High Dependency Care Unit opened on the 10th February 2020. The next exciting refurbishment phase has continued on remaining parts of the existing unit, which was re-modelled and provides new special care bed bays and other supporting space.
In September 2021, planning permission was granted to go ahead with a new state-of-the-art Surgical Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) on the site of Alder Hey.
The new unit will feature 18 individual family rooms for parents to call home and be alongside their new-borns whilst being cared for.
The unit will address a shared concern between Liverpool Women’s and Alder Hey, that babies who need specialist surgery currently have to be transferred to Alder Hey to get the specialist surgical care they need. They are then transferred back to Liverpool Women’s Hospital to continue their specialist neonatal care.
Specialist neonatal staff from Liverpool Women’s Hospital will work alongside Alder Hey at the new NICU ensuring that babies do not need to be transferred back and forth between the two hospitals.
Central to the new unit will be the use of new innovative technology. This will continue to include Telehealth Medicine Robots currently being used which allow clinicians to monitor and see babies remotely.
There are further technologies being worked through currently to support the vision of a silent NICU including Neonatal Tracking; a wearable device worn around a parents wrist which send signals to receivers around the hospital and allow staff to know where the parent is in case of an emergency and also virtual monitoring of babies, allowing doctors and nurses to have access to have constant sight on the babies and their vital signs, whilst still providing the family with the safety and privacy of a cubicle.
A dedicated surgical NICU will provide the safest environment possible for our youngest patients and their families at Alder Hey and will further compliment the Liverpool Neonatal Partnership between the two hospital sites. We will also be able to reduce the number of unnecessary and sometimes risky transfers of neonates between Alder Hey and referring centres, significantly improving the experience of patients and families.
The facility will cost £16.5m to build with £2.5m being provided by Alder Hey Children’s Charity.
Charity funding will provide ‘over and above’ enhancements and equipment for both the clinical space and family areas, elevating it from a facility that provides families with a safe and secure environment for them and their new-borns, to a truly world-class facility that wraps-around families with the most vulnerable babies in the region. To donate go to - https://www.alderheycharity.org/surgical-neonatal-appeal/
The new NICU is scheduled to be completed by 2023.
Alder Hey Children's Charity
