Tufton says social patients still a strain on CRH
... as patients resort to lying on the floor while waiting
Published:Tuesday | August 15, 2023 | 12:10 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
“A real crisis” is how Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton described the situation as patients at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay, St James, have resorted to sleeping or resting on the floor as they await medical attention.
“I am not excusing away the fact that people must be treated humanely. But there is a practical reality that we face, which, clearly, the Opposition is either not understanding or ignoring for their own purposes,” Tufton said yesterday. The minister was responding to a call from his opposition counterpart, Dr Morais Guy, for the situation to be urgently remedied.
“Every day we struggle with the prioritisation of [patients with] life-threatening illnesses and oftentimes, it means that the persons who leave hospitals have to be placed in a secondary area and because they are not [incapacitated], they do what they want to do sometimes,” Tufton told The Gleaner.
“It is not to say that this is always the case, but that’s just how it is, unfortunately, but we will continue to try and we are building out Cornwall and we are putting in additional capacity at the Spanish Town Hospital in St Catherine in a number of areas. So we think that will, over time, ease some of the burden,” he added, expressing hope that the prevention messages being promoted at the primary healthcare level will also see benefits.
On Monday, Guy highlighted what he said were patients lying on the floor at the problem-plagued CRH.
In an accompanying press release, he urged Tufton “to urgently address the unhealthy and dehumanising conditions at many of the island’s hospitals, especially the Cornwall Regional Hospital, where admitted patients are now lying on floors and chairs to access hospital care”.
He added: “Recently, he glowingly reported on the commendable progress in the construction of the adolescent hospital on the same property as CRH while ignoring poor patient care in that hospital.”
He said that despite repeatedly bringing to Tufton’s attention the problems many Jamaicans face in accessing public health care, not enough is being done to address the issue.
However, Tufton and the senior medical officer at CRH, Dr Derek Harvey, have attributed the overcrowding at that facility to the recurring issue of social cases – patients who have concluded their medical treatment but have been abandoned by relatives.
The hospital is operating at 100 per cent bed occupancy with between 30 and 40 cases of social patients, the minister said, adding that this is a national problem.
“ ... At any point in time, we have between six and 12 per cent of our 4,000 beds that are occupied by patients or residents who have been discharged but have nowhere to go. ... It does take away from bed availability of a system that is under pressure, so what we do sometimes, when we can’t help it, is to move patients into a holding area and place them in a reclining chair ... ,” the minister said.
He said that despite efforts to negotiate with the infirmaries to take these persons, “you can’t move them out fast enough before others come in”.
Harvey admitted that some patients who have to wait in excess of 24 hours to receive medical care at times complain of discomfort and voluntarily relocate to the floor to ease their distress. However, he said, under no circumstances is this practice encouraged.