Health Ministry targets lengthy waiting time at A&E

Apr 28, 2009 News

The issue of patients’ waiting time at the Accident and Emergency Units and at pharmacies within public hospitals will come under scrutiny as early as next month when the Ministry of Health commences countrywide surveys.
Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, made this disclosure recently. According to the Minister he had previously mandated hospitals to conduct patient-satisfaction surveys twice annually.
He disclosed that one such survey should have already been done last month and it was expected that another would have commenced in October.

However, the Minister said that no hospital, with the exception of the New Amsterdam Public Hospital, which did a survey but did not reach all of the deliverables, complied with the directive. And though he commended the efforts of the Berbice hospital, the Minister said that the Ministry has since decided to revoke the responsibility from all of the hospitals. “We will do it ourselves and that would make it more difficult for them as somebody else will be doing it. Instead of them knowing and putting things right before they do the survey it would now be done completely by us.”
But according to the Minister he does not anticipate that the process will be likened to one of ‘shock treatment’, adding that he fully intends to inform the respective hospitals of the Ministry’s programme in this regard.

The process, he said, is likely to commence between the third and fourth weeks of May and will constitute both in-patient and outpatient surveys for patient satisfaction.
Surveys will be done in May at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporations, the New Amsterdam, West Demerara Regional, Suddie and Linden Hospitals. Another survey will also be conducted at a private hospital, which is yet to be identified. The surveys, the Minister said will be repeated in November of this year.
According to the Minister the process comes as part of the Ministry’s effort to try to improve the quality of service offered.

“There is no such thing as ‘no’ waiting time. There will to be waiting time but we would put in measures so that we have efficiency and waiting time that are consistent with the staffing we have and with the number of patients we have,” the Minister asserted.
“We have completed the survey forms and we are now going to be training people…we will use some of the medical school students from the University of Guyana,” the Minister disclosed.
The surveys will be characteristic of having the specially trained persons monitoring two specific measures being the waiting time at the accident and emergency units and pharmacies of the target hospitals.

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Health Ministry targets lengthy waiting time at A&E

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