Reduced waiting time at GPHC “not an overnight thing”

Reduced waiting time at GPHC “not an overnight thing” – Health Minister

Oct 13, 2009 News

With the introduction of more than 60 doctors to the local health sector recently, Health Minister, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, had voiced his confidence in the fact that the waiting time at public health facilities would be noticeably reduced.
He first vocalised this theory about two months ago, shortly after the Cuban-trained Guyanese doctors returned to their homeland to offer their services.
However, Minister Ramsammy during an interview with this newspaper yesterday, disclosed that the reduced waiting time is still not a reality.
“Reducing the waiting time certainly can’t happen overnight. It is not going to happen immediately…,” said the Minister.
He explained that while the health sector is now able to place doctors where there were none, the intention is also to add the new doctors where there are existing doctors. But according to the Minister, the immediate impact will not be truly realised until even more doctors are inducted into the system.
“Of course, whenever we add a doctor to an existing one we are most definitely going to have less waiting time. But for now our first priority is to put doctors where there are no doctors. This is not going to happen right away because it is not just adding doctors to existing services but we are also adding new services.”
According to the Minister, although patients will endure some waiting time, the public health sector will continue to work towards shortening the overall wait.
The new doctors, according to the Minister, represent the largest contingent of doctors to be incorporated into the local health sector at a single time.
He had speculated that the introduction of the new doctors will adequately help to address the problem of long waiting periods, a problem which is common to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, in he main.
“Overall, the GPHC has done an excellent job but the chronic problem it has, in terms of its services, has been long waits. Sometimes 200 people have a need to be treated but there is only one doctor.” However, with the new batch and other batches to come, the Minister said that the Ministry will be able to reduce the waiting period by putting more doctors in the areas that usually have large amount of patients.
Regional hospitals, he noted will also benefit in like manner, as additional doctors will be dispatched there. According to him, facilities such as New Amsterdam, Suddie, Linden and the West Demerara hospitals will have more doctors and by extension will reduce patients’ need to visit the GPHC.
Additional doctors will also be placed at the district hospitals and at the Diagnostic centres, the Minister said, to ensure that there are sufficient staffers at those levels as well, thus, allowing for equity of the health service delivered.
And then there will be the introduction of doctors at health centres, a development that will see doctors being assigned to clusters of health centres. For example, he said that all 27 health centres of Region Six will have doctors assigned to them shortly.
“They will not be there on an everyday basis; they don’t need to have them all the time. But they will be supporting the medexes and nurses that are available at the health centres.”
However, the Minister noted that some Regions such as Region Four, with large Health Centres will have a doctor assigned. With the addition of the doctors at varying levels of the health sector, the Minister noted that citizens will now have greater access to doctors, adding that from the national referral hospital all the way to the health post there will be doctors available.
“This changes the paradigm…In Guyana it used to be that the only the National and Regional hospitals had doctors and some districts had but this will change. On the continuum we will have doctors leading the provision of services and the consequence will be improved health care for the people.”
But even as the additional doctors are strategically placed, the Minister disclosed that the Health Ministry will be faced with more daunting challenges as these relate to training and retaining support staff.
According to the Minister, the effectiveness of the doctors will be dependent on meeting their need for support teams. As such, he noted that the Ministry’s training programmes in other areas will have to be accelerated over the next few years.

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