The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH Minister Dr Perry Gomez said the critical care block under construction at the Princess Margaret Hospital is “inadequate” considering the needs of the country’s growing population – as it will only have 20 beds.

He was speaking in the House of Assembly yesterday after opposition leader and former Health Minister Hubert Minnis praised the new hospital unit as “state of the art” and part of the “comprehensive plan for healthcare” developed by the FNM.

Dr Gomez said: “It is indeed a very nice unit. However, I refrained from being critical of it in public – up until now – because, as you pointed out, all the organisation and all the thought that went into this critical care block, what surprised me most and what is disappointing in the critical care block, is its size. You built a critical care block with 20 beds.”

Noting that PMH currently has 12 critical care beds, yet the population has “doubled” since PMH was built, Dr Gomez added: “The unit is too small for the size of the country we have today. If you had done the homework properly, you would have come up with a different formula; and so don’t come here bragging about what you do, because what you have built is inadequate for the population of this size.”

Responding, Dr Minnis explained that at the time, studies and utilisation review surveys were done to estimate the number of beds that would be needed.

Dr Minnis had also lamented in his contribution, that nearly 200 persons allocated to the hospital from the 52-week programme are reportedly now unemployed.

“The level of service to be provided in the critical care block at PMH, is the most expensive, technologically and resource intensive area of healthcare and is considered to account for more than 20 per cent of the overall operational expenses of the hospital and these services have been under-resourced over the years due to the increase in trauma and severe shortage of specialists nurses and trained support staff.

“That is why the FNM government gave priority to the Public Hospitals Authority by allocating almost 200 persons from the 52 weeks programme with more than 70 of those persons to be trained as anaesthetic assistants, surgical technicians, patient care assistants, emergency medical technicians, and other support personnel, so as to ensure that there is a ready pool of trained support staff to meet the increased demand in service capacity at these new health institutions.

“Those successful in the health component of the 52-week jobs and skills training programme were amongst the best qualified persons engaged in the programme – some being graduates of two and four year college programmes . . . Inexplicably, when this government discontinued the 52-week programme all of these trained professionals were left unemployed and the medical facilities were left short staffed.

“I can only imagine the sense of disappointment among those young people who were not only trained, but certified as technicians and looking forward to promising careers in the Public Health care system, when they learned that they were no longer needed.”

Also responding to this, Dr Gomez said: “I would like you to tell me who trained them, where did they work, and so on because they were just assigned to the institution and I don’t know of any evidence to say they are certified.”

Dr Minnis’ comments also drew a response from MICAL MP V Alfred Gray, who denied that the government “discontinued” the 52 week programme.

He explained that the programme “came to an end”.

He said: “There’s nobody on this side that brought that to an end. It was designed for 52 weeks and everybody, as much as I know, and as much as this government knows, worked for 52 weeks. If he has names of anybody who worked shorter than 52 weeks, bring them to us and we will fix it.”