By Robert A Emmanuel
After discovering a lack of hot water in the operating theatres at the Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre dating back over a decade—one among a plethora of issues—Health Minister Sir Molwyn Joseph has pledged a personal intervention into problems at the hospital.
During a whirlwind press conference at the Ministry of Health headquarters yesterday, the minister sought to lay blame at the feet of the hospital’s Board of Directors for the troubles facing the institution, also attacking the 2009 UPP administration for tying his hands from getting involved in addressing the situation directly.
This, he says, will not be the case moving forward.
“Essentially what [Section 10 of the Mount St John’s Medical Centre Act] did was to put the management squarely in the hands of a constructed team and remove what has been the traditional management of statutory bodies away from the influence of the minister at that time.
“It was therefore not surprising that, over the years, there has been a culture in this hospital where ministers have somewhat removed themselves from the day-to-day operations of the hospital and allowed the management to take over,” Sir Molwyn said.
He argued that the country’s Constitution gave him “directional control” over all public departments, including the hospital, stating that the Act had contravened the Constitution.
However, the Health Minister’s comments were contradictory to an amendment passed in 2021, which was brought by Sir Molwyn himself to have the ministry and Minister of Health play a greater role in the hospital’s daily functioning.
“Originally, when the MSJMC Act was passed, the hospital was conceptualised as a privately run institution that was being managed by a private company. This is no longer the case.…Hence, subsection (2) of section 10 [of the Act] is no longer required,” the Explanatory Memorandum of the Mount St John Medical Centre (Amendment) Act 2021 read, referring to a now invalid section that said “the minister shall not direct the Board, its officers, servants or agents on the manner in which it manages the daily operations of the hospital”.
However, since this constitutional interpretation, the Health Minister said that he has been visiting the hospital “virtually on a daily basis” over the last four to five weeks to assess the situation.
He vowed to continue to visit on a regular basis, adding, “I have the energy to go up there every day”.
The Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre has been dealing with low morale among staff for months, with burned-out nurses, an increasingly irate public and an abundance of malfunctioning equipment hampering hospital services.
In September 2022, nurses reported a toxic environment at the hospital during the pandemic, stating that they felt “broken and burnt out” after frequent attempts to have the ministry step in.
Members of the public have also taken to social media to express their frustration with hospital services.
During Tuesday’s two-hour press conference, one of the major issues that the minister said needed to be addressed was a lack of accountability at the hospital.
He gave the example of an incident last week where he reportedly overheard technicians at the hospital discussing the hospital chiller overheating due to a valve being turned off.
“But what I did not hear was anyone who said that they were responsible for the valve being turned off…I called all the technical people who worked at the hospital… and I asked them all who was responsible to turn off the valve. No one. None of them accepted that anyone was responsible.
“The point I wish to make is not to point fingers because, in my management experience, that is not the solution; the solution is to look at the management structure and to look at the whole reporting and accounting on a routine basis,” he said.
Holding himself responsible for turning the hospital around, he suggested that the previous malfunctioning of hospital equipment may have been deliberate acts.
“It appears to me that there needs to be an investigation at that hospital to determine why these machines at the hospital, almost on a routine basis, keep breaking down,” he announced.
Another issue, Sir Molwyn said, was the lack of an operation manual to properly maintain equipment at the hospital.
He announced yesterday that he has commissioned an engineer to oversee the equipment, stating that more than EC$500,000 worth of hospital repairs have been carried out so far.
“This hospital was established back in 2009 and up to as I speak here, there isn’t an operational manual or maintenance manual for that hospital, so that has been commissioned since we have hired a new engineer at the hospital who started at the beginning of this month,” Sir Molwyn added.