What is so unfortunate is that all this is being dramatised at the expense of the family who could have been saved the grief and the trauma if only vision, foresight and a spirit of innovation had engaged the attention of our current and previous Ministers of Health.
There are many lessons to be learnt from these experiences. But the country will be the better for the experiences only if the Government is dead serious about addressing the problems facing the health care delivery system and commits itself to do so in an exemplary and expeditious manner.
It must take the bull by the horns. This is no time for one upmanship, propagandising or appearing to be clever.
As a prerequisite, the Government must be prepared to admit that this health sector sore has been allowed to fester and deteriorate for far too long. It is a sore which has been handed down from administration to administration each of which is always quick to glorify itself that the service is improving leaps and bounds under its watch.
Successive administratiions have basked in an aura of self denial and self gratification based for the most part on public opinion surveys, the limited scope of which has done nothing more than skim the surface of the innumerable underlying issues which have plagued our health care delivery services over the years.
What successive Ministers of Health have not come to terms with is that the problems which are emerging with each passing day originate countless miles below the surface and are fathoms deeper than meets the eye.
They are so deeply submerged that they are hidden in comfort way out of sight and are innocently and clandestinely embedded within the day to day operations and practices to the extent that they have become the norm.
No casual, superficial, ad hoc or knee jerk treatment of these ingrained, endemic and malignant viruses, as well intentioned as they may be, is going to get us out of this complex and convoluted health sector mess.
For example, something must be radically and disturbingly wrong somewhere and somehow when we can point to no less than 25 CEOs of RHAs who, over the past 25 years have either been fired, suspended, called upon to resign or left their jobs in disgust.
Using this as just one example it is clear that the health sector problems are not only systematic but there is need for a comprehensive corporate cultural overhaul.
How in God’s name can we make progress in improving the quality of our health care delivery services nationwide when this state of affairs is allowed to continue unabated especially in our flagship health care facilities?
I am convinced that one of the main contributing factors to the problems in the health sector is that successive Ministers and their Boards have stubbornly held to the view that they have a monopoly on the solutions and, tunnel visioned and inexperienced as they are, consequently set out to undertake these monumental and complex tasks with their own personal self glorification as their goal.
The people of this country will find it difficult to believe that a comprehensive master plan to improve the heath care delivery services of this country was developed and presented to the Ministry of Health since February 14th 2005 at no cost to the Government of the day.
It was developed by a group of seventeen 17 U.S. health care delivery experts headed by an individual who served as a Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush.
He was also the Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Administrator ... for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare, and Medicaid Services (CMS), a position to which he was appointed in July 2001 by President Bush and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
In the master plan to which I refer the team of U.S. experts identified fifteen 15 critical key result areas which needed to be clinically addressed: Care Delivery, Emergency Care Delivery, Quality of Care, Documentation (In patient), Documentation (Out patient), Supply Chain Management, Facilities Management, Change Management. Clinical/Operations, Finance, Information Technology, Health Plan Rationalisation, Construction, Human Capital, National Health Insurance.
I remain unwaveringly convinced that unless a master plan, of the type proposed by the team of experts, is put in place to deal with these complex issues, we shall continue to witness the type of inefficiencies, irregularities, irresponsible patterns of conduct, malpractices, indiscretions and dilemmas which plague the sector.
We will, as in previous instances, continue to treat the effect rather than the cause. And fiddle with the harp while our citizens die in vain.
Let me make myself abundantly clear. The improvement of our health care delivery service is no walk in the park. It is not for the faint hearted.
It is as complex as it is complicated; it is multi faceted, multi directional and multi dimensional; it is intrinsically time consuming as it is laboriously challenging. But the start must be made.
It is the reason why the Master Plan conceptualized and developed by the group of U.S. experts contained 1,715 action plans which were to be implemented over the short, medium and long term.
Had work on the plan been commenced six years ago when it was presented and so overwhelmingly appreciated and endorsed by the hierarchy of the Ministry of Health at that time, our beloved country would have been spared most of these heartaches as we would have already cleaned up much of the health care delivery mess in which we now shamelessly still find ourselves.
Knowing that the current administration has inherited this master plan, which was so uncaringly sidelined by the previous administration, and fully conscious of what that plan can contribute to remedying the countless ills that bedevil our health care delivery services, it is extremely unbearable and unpalatable for me to witness day by day the agony of our mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, sisters and brothers at the hands of our poorly equipped and inadequately staffed health care delivery institutions.
It is even more frustrating when one hears the groans and feel the pains of our dedicated and committed nurses, doctors and hospital administrators crying out for leadership, direction, support and empathy but in return, ignored, maligned, despised, disrespected and insulted as they suffer at the hands of health care delivery systems, procedures, processes and facilities as outdated and archaic as the rock of ages.
My heart bleeds for all who, in spite of these set backs and shortcomings, selflessly and painstakingly labour in the vineyard facing all odds, despairing that there is no relief in sight when the reality is that for six long years (2005-2011) that relief in the form of a Health Care Delivery Master Plan to bring comfort and compassion to all and sundry has been just sitting around lodged in bookshelves so closely within the grasp of our decision makers.
What a difference it will make if one visionary administration will bite the bullet, stretch out that hand, pull the plan out and get the show on the road.
Roy Mitchell
Principal Consultant |Executive Relationships Marketing (ERM)
St. Augustine, Trinidad
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