The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH and Wellness Minister Dr Michael Darville said renovations at Princess Margaret Hospital will begin as early as the beginning of next week.

The minister gave an update at the official commissioning of the National Emergency Medical Services (NEMS) headquarters yesterday.

The Tall Pines MP not only mentioned the work being done at PMH, but plans to improve clinics on the Family Islands.

He said: “As we speak, there’s a transformation change that is presently in stream for the construction of nine new clinics throughout our Family Islands, the renovation of 22 clinics, the construction of a new state of the art hospital for Grand Bahama and a construction for new state of the art hospital here in New Providence. While this is going on, we are renovating the existing structures throughout our archipelago and our hospitals.

“As you are aware a few weeks ago, (the) managing director made it very clear that we are now going to use some components of Doctors Hospital West where we’re going to move our patients so we can get on with the business of renovating certain aspects of the Princess Margaret Hospital that has been in disrepair for the last 20 years. I am pleased to report that this is pretty much done in principle and the work will begin as early as the beginning of next week where our contractors would go to the Princess Margaret Hospital.

“We are going to renovate female surgical one. We are going to replace the elevators, we’re going to renovate male medical two. We’re going to repair the infrastructural damage that exists - we’re going to have to begin now to reconstruct from the ground up so we can get our wards up and going. We can repair our eye ward. We can do something with our paediatric ward.”

Earlier this month, an agreement that allows the transfer of PMH patients to Doctors Hospital West was announced. It was stated that some patients will be moved to the facility on Blake Road for approximately 14 weeks. It is estimated this will cost the government between $2 million to $2.5 million.

The minister told reporters on the sidelines of the event that the transfer of patients is going “quite well”.

“We have now finalised the preparatory measures for our contractors to go in - that will move very quickly. Our crews will work both night and day, in order for us to meet the deadline that we indicated between 15 and 18 weeks while we use Doctors Hospital West.”

Public Hospital Authority (PHA) managing director Dr Aubynette Rolle had previously explained that the PHA’s agreement with Doctors Hospital allows for full usage of the Blake Road facility amounting to some 51 beds.

When asked how many patients have been transferred and are expected to be transferred, she indicated: “Now in totality, and you’re talking about admissions and discharge, I don’t have that on me, but what I can tell you now is we’re occupying. So you would have known that we would have requested the assistance for 51 beds - we’re occupying at least 50 percent.

“So we’re moving. What has happened though, is we’re sort of moving anywhere between three to five patients per day. The reason for that is we have a lot of internal medicine patients. However, in our plan that we spoke to you about originally we’re moving those stable patients. What we’re now seeing in this season is very critical patients. So the critical ones have to remain at the hospital and then the stable ones go down and sometimes we have to make that swap, because we just want to ensure the quality of care.”

As for the cost of PMH’s renovations, Dr Darville said: “The renovations at the PMH I cannot give an exact figure, but there is a wide cross section of contracts. The renovations for the male medical two is over half a million dollars. The renovations for the basement of the unit that is above the eye ward is somewhere between $400,000 to $450,000 - I don’t know the exact amount off the top of my head.”

The minister also spoke about plans for Grand Bahama’s new hospital, saying he expects the groundbreaking for the new facility to happen soon.