Social patients clogging up bed space out west
WITH BED space now at a premium across western Jamaica as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to churn out a growing number of positive cases, health authorities in the region want social patients now housed in health facilities to be moved out to create space for genuinely ill persons.
Indications are that there are 40 social patients now occupying much-needed bed space, causing an additional cash burden on the Government as it is costing approximately $3,000 per day to provide for them.
According to Errol Greene, who heads the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA), caring for social patients is an expensive situation, in addition to limiting the capacity to admit persons who are really ill and who should be the ones occupying the bed space.
“It is a very expensive situation,”said Greene, in speaking to the cost of housing the social patients. “Cornwall Regional has 30-odd, Falmouth has six, and Hanover is not bad.”
Greene also noted that there is now consideration as to whether the former Ulster Spring Hospital could be retrofitted to house social patients. The hospital was closed in the mid-1980s, but over recent years, residents, led by Nigel Moore of the Jamaicans Abroad Helping Jamaicans at Home (JAHJ) Foundation, have been lobbying for the rehabilitation of the hospital.
“We have done a significant amount of work there,” said Moore, who is excited by the prospect of the hospital getting some attention. “The female ward has been refurbished. If we get government support, we are ready to contribute more.”
During a recent tour of the western region, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton described the social-patient situation as being crazy and intimated that he might be seeking a legal option to address it.
“It is a crazy situation when people leave their significant others at hospitals. The situation has to be challenged in the courts,”said Tufton.“A lawyer has been engaged to see how we can address it.”
Former director of the WRHA, Dr Ken Garfield Douglas, addressing the matter of social patients, said the hospital’s duty is to rehabilitate sick people, not to be responsible for their postrehabilitative care.
One classic case of a social patient clogging up the system is now occurring at the Falmouth Hospital with 51-year-old Dennis Green of Crown Land in Trelawny, who has been housed at the facility for the past 12 years. Green fell from a breadfruit tree and has been paralysed from the waist down. His brother took him to the hospital and has not been back.
Recently, Falmouth Mayor Colin Gager rejected a suggestion for the infirmary in Falmouth to be used to house social patients, saying that that is not the purpose of the facility.
“These people have not been declared poor, and as such, are not the responsibility of the municipality,” said Gager.