A New Paediatric Intensive Care Unit for The Portland Hospital

The Portland Hospital for Women and Children, the only private hospital of its kind in the UK, is to open a new Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) adding to its already extensive enhanced care facilities for babies and children.

Work is already underway on the building of the £3 million seven bed, level three ICU

on the 6th floor of The Portland. It is scheduled to open in the autumn and will cater for children up to the age of 16.

The hospital already has a two bed paediatric high dependency unit (HDU), a three

cot neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), a five cot special baby care unit

(SCBU) and a two bed adult high dependency unit. The hospital also has a five bed paediatric

neuro rehabilitation unit.

With 41 special paediatric beds, the Portland admits over 2,500 children every year as inpatients.

Children being treated in the new intensive care unit will be cared for by a 40 strong

team of specialist staff including paediatric consultant intensivists and specialist paediatric ICU nurses. The hospital is unique in having a team of over 80 consultant paediatricians and surgeons, many of them leaders in their field at some of London's renowned teaching hospitals.

The paediatric ICU team will also be supported by a multidisciplinary team of

specialists including physiotherapists, occupational therapists and play

specialists. In addition to the large team of paediatricians at the hospital, the Portland also has specialist doctors - resident in the hospital 24x7.

The Chief Executive of The Portland, Janene Madden, said the building of the new PICU was a milestone for the hospital.

"The Portland is the largest private children's hospital in the country. With over 40,000 children's appointments here every year and a growing range of complex procedures available for our inpatients, we need to increase our capacity," she said. "This is a milestone in the long history of The Portland and one of many areas of expansion and renewal the hospital has

seen over the last couple of years."

"Over the past two years alone, we have invested £6 million in new diagnostic technology, expansion and refurbishment and we have brought in new specialist staff to meet the growing demand for our women's and children's services. Together with our sister hospital's paediatric cardiac and cancer units and ICU (at The Harley Street Clinic), this new intensive care unit will mean that we can cater for every eventuality for children from birth to the age of 16," said Janene.

Note to editors

HCA International Limited owns the Capital's six leading private hospitals all based in central London and each with an international reputation for the highest standards of acute and tertiary care. They are: The Wellington - the largest private hospital in Europe, London Bridge Hospital, The Harley Street Clinic, The Portland Hospital for Women and Children, The Lister Hospital and The Princess Grace Hospital.

HCA also has six outpatient and diagnostic centres, a blood and bone cancer treatment joint venture with the NHS at University College Hospital together with a young person's cancer unit, The London Gamma Knife Centre, another joint venture with the NHS at St Bartholomew's Hospital and Harley Street at Queen's, a private patient cancer centre at the NHS Queen's Hospital in Romford. In addition, HCA is developing, with the internationally renowned Christie cancer hospital in Manchester, a new state of the art private patient unit - to be called The Christie Clinic - for cancer patients from across the North of England.

The six HCA hospitals in London treat around 300,000 patients per year. They also specialise in the most complex medical procedures including cardiac care, liver transplantation, inter cranial surgery and complex cancer care. The HCA cancer network, for example, is the largest provider of cancer care in the UK outside the NHS. Uniquely, HCA has its own clinical trials unit based in Harley Street in central London. Medical teams in HCA are involved in research programmes aimed at finding new treatments in areas such as heart disease and cancer.

In recent years HCA has invested over £300 million in capital expenditure including new diagnostic and treatment technology. As an example, HCA installed at The Harley Street Clinic, the UK's first revolutionary CyberKnife robotic radiotherapy machine, which is able to target previously untreatable tumours.

For more Media Information, please call Neil Huband on 07808 298989 or 020 7436 6372.