Andrews deal stays
Published:Tuesday | May 5, 2020 | 12:18 AM
The Government’s deal with Andrews Memorial Hospital to help in the COVID-19 fight will not be disturbed although the private facility does not have certification to operate under the law.
“I would not be motivated to discontinue an arrangement that actually adds value to the COVID fight,” Dr Christopher Tufton, health and wellness minister, said yesterday evening of the agreement brokered in April that will see Andrews accepting non-COVID-19 patients from the state-owned Kingston Public Hospital.
Tufton had earlier admitted that he was “unaware” at the time the deal was struck that the Hope Road-based Seventh-day Adventist institution was not among the four private hospitals certified to operate under the Nursing Homes Registration Act of 1934.
The Government faces a major resource shortage in the public health system’s capacity to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and would be hard-pressed to reject the additional support it could get from private institutions.
Meanwhile, as health officials rush to address the poor oversight of private hospitals uncovered in a Sunday Gleaner probe, the minister is insisting that the impression should not be given that “private institutions do not perform an important function in the wider population and that there are no standards that we can depend on”.
But as he told The Gleaner on Monday, there is a need for a “tidy system” buttressed by a “regulatory framework to oversee and ensure consistency of standards”.
The Government has initiated a special process driven by the Standards and Regulatory Division of the health ministry to help at least 17 private hospitals regularise their practice.
Years of inaction across political administrations in failing to revise outdated legislation and properly resource enforcement bodies have been blamed for the state of affairs. Tufton has also admitted personal responsibility for not operationalising a new framework.