The overall aim of this project is to ‘identify how cross-border hospital services can provide mutual benefits for the people of the border region’. It is in two strands.
The report of the first strand, carried out by CCBS Deputy Director Ruth Taillon, was published on 14 October 2010 under the title Exploring the Potential for Cross-Border Hospital Services in the Irish Border Region: The role of community involvement in planning hospital services. It was launched by the chairman of the Northern Ireland Patient Client Council, Sean Brown, at the project’s emerging findings seminar in Ravensdale, Co Louth, on that date. The keynote speaker at the seminar was Dr Michael Wilks, immediate past president of the Comité Permanent des Medecins Européens, and a noted authority on cross-border health care in Europe.
The final report featured feedback from 11 focus groups in the border region and a range of patients and medical professionals. Case studies of service users and campaigning community groups in three areas were undertaken: cancer care in the North-West; cystic fibrosis in the two jurisdictions; and the campaign for a hospital in Omagh. Among the recommendations were that Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) concepts in hospital planning should be properly implemented; service users from both jurisdictions should be involved in the planning of new services at Altnagelvin (Derry/Londonderry) and Enniskillen hospitals; and service users should have full information about their entitlement to services in the other jurisdiction. Both the full report and an executive summary are available on the Centre’s website (www.crossborder.ie).
The second strand, a study to develop a prototype modelling tool for hospital planning on a cross-border (particularly in the border region) and all-island basis, is being carried out by the consultancy firm Horwath Bastow Charleton (with a team led by Shane McQuillan), and will be completed by summer 2011. An ‘emerging findings’ conference was held in May 2011.
The final report of this study will:
- Explore what six or seven selected specialist services would look like in the future if they were delivered in the border region on the basis of population needs rather than jurisdictional frontiers. Among the services being examined are general surgery; orthopaedic surgery; ENT; urology; some paediatric surgery; acute mental health; and treatment of cystic fibrosis. There will be a particular focus on building on the substantial work of Cooperation and Working Together (CAWT) in some of these areas.
- Develop in a prototype form a modelling tool for hospital planning on a border region and all-island basis, based on the analysis of these exemplar services, and taking into account factors like the geographical distribution of patients, supply and demand issues, and transport to and accessibility of hospital and other services.
- Recommendations on the future configuration of hospitals, North and South, that would be required if the planning of acute services in the border region was on the basis of population needs only – both on a short to medium term incremental scale (the CAWT model) and on a longer term scale with a more radical vision for change.
The Steering Group for this project brings health and cross-border cooperation specialists together from the Institute of Public Health in Ireland, the Health Research Board (RoI), the Health Service Executive (RoI)(observer), Cooperation and Working Together (CAWT), the Irish Patients Association, the Patient Client Council (NI), the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs (observer), the Centre for Cross Border Studies and the University of Warwick.
See the presentation by Horwarth Barstow Charlton 
at the Emerging Findings Seminar on 12 May 2011 in Dundalk.
See the final report of The role of community involvement in planning hospital services and the speech by Sean Brown.
