Constant complaints about relatively poor services at public health facilities like Peebles Hospital have left the Health Services Authority promising a turn-around in the new year.
Recently appointed Health Services boss Darlene Carty Baptiste said gap and risk analyses as well as an audit are being conducted with the aim of transforming the image of healthcare delivery across the BVI.
“The healthcare systems that you see today would not be the same that you see next year. They will be embedded in quality across the entire organization,” Baptiste promised.She was speaking with BVI News at the end of a poorly attended Health Services community meeting at Alexandrina Maduro Primary School in the Sixth District.
Apart from Health Services employees and the media, only two residents showed up for the meeting last evening. Both of them vented their displeasure with the sub-standard services sometimes meted out to patients at Peebles Hospital.
The complaints included poor customer service, lengthy wait for treatment and poor mannerisms displayed by members of staff, especially in the hospital’s admission area. Citing some of those factors, one resident said she has turned to private doctors.
Some Health Services workers attempted to downplay the concerns raised, but Carty Baptiste encouraged patients to formally address their grouses to the Authority.
‘We are taking the concerns of each individual seriously. We know that we have not been consistent with our services, but we are working aggressively. We are conducting risk analysis. We are doing gap analysis and auditing the services. So we actually are gonna track persons as they come through and see where the gaps are, and address them in real time,” the Health Services boss told BVI News.
Regarding the promised transformation, she said: “It includes looking at training up the staff, changing out the staff and of course holding everyone in the entire organization accountable for what needs to be done to ensure that we meet the patients’ needs.”
“Changing out” of staff, she explained, will see some employees being re-fitted into positions that better correspond with their skills. “We (for example) received complaints about the fact that the communication hasn’t been strong. So we need to put somebody in place who has stronger communication to let the patients know that – like in cases of wait time – we are not saying that what they have is less important, but it’s based on priority because it’s an emergency room.”
Carty Baptiste said the performance of employees will be measured based on feedback from staff and patients as well as the health information management system which is scheduled to be implemented on a phased basis over the next three months.Addressing another community meeting in late October, Chairman of the Health Services Authority John Cline announced that government is spending $1.7 million on the information system.
Director of Hospital Services Cedorene Patricia Malone Smith, who also spoke at the October meeting, gave examples of how the system will work.
“We are about to get an electronic medical system for doing our documentation process. This way, we can control who comes in the (hospital) door. So when you come in the door we can see who came in, when you came, and what was done to you when you got there. So if you had care at East End Clinic and you end up at the hospital, I no longer have to wonder – what did they do at East End clinic for this person? I would be able to just pull up your name and see that you went to East End Clinic two days ago, and these were the things that were done to you,” Malone Smith said.
