Cornwall crisis - Tufton looks overseas as contractors blamed for hospital renovation delays
Published:Tuesday | December 15, 2020 | 12:17 AMJanet Silvera/Senior Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Failure to deliver the rehabilitation of the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) three years after closing sections of the main building to the medical facility is being blamed on a lack of local expertise.
That has prompted Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton to pledge a substantive shake-up to the renovation plan for the Type A facility, concerns he plans to lay before Cabinet. External technical input will be at the heart of that plan.
That development will be important not only for Cornwall but for a significant outlay of capital expenditures slated for the next three to five years, Tufton has disclosed.
He stressed that international expertise would be critical to getting over the hump – an obstacle he blames primarily on the lack of local experience in hospital buildout.
“Too many recalibrations and too many re-evaluations, too many variations, and I believe it is substantially a function of inexperience,” Tufton told a Gleaner Editors’ Forum, held in conjunction with the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The minister sought to assure that he was not labelling Jamaican contractors and project managers as inefficient or incompetent, emphasising that they were just out of their depth in terms of delivering on the specific outlay of the project.
“I am suggesting that they have had very little, if any at all, [experience] in hospital buildout, and we have paid the price for that at Cornwall,” added Tufton.
The minister declined to offer an estimated timeline for completion or budget projection, even with cost overruns climbing.
“We are behind over a year in delays, not that it should have been completed, but we should have been further ahead,” Tufton stated, adding that his team may have underestimated the scale of the project and the technical capacity needed for execution.
“The truth is, we have not built a hospital in Jamaica for nearly 30 years. A hospital is not an apartment building, it involves a lot more complicated moving parts, air flow, sanitisation issues, and we just don’t have the local experience,” the health minister said.
Besides several revised estimates, costs have also risen as CRH grapples with the evolving logistics of providing hospital services.
The learning curve has been sharp but has offered valuable lessons, said Tufton, while conceding that “we have failed in a number of respects”.
The scope of work, initially focused on a heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system on the first floor, has morphed to include mechanical, electrical, and plumbing renovation on several other floors. The works included reinforcing compromised beams, new retaining walls, and the removal of the chimney system.
Phase Two of the project is expected to cost just about $1 billion, and phase three, the largest which will go to international tender, approximately $3 billion. However, the cost to rent off-site locations housing the various clinics and administrative functions was not immediately clear.
“I believe that is also $1 billion,” the minister estimated.
A number of services that had been initially outsourced are currently being administered on compound, said Tufton.
The Mt Salem clinic has doubled capacity and is now being used as a COVID-19 ward. A dialysis unit and diagnostic services have also been installed.
Despite challenges to staff and patients, CRH reportedly offers increased access to cancer treatment.
Some elective services are still outsourced to Falmouth Hospital.
The health minister said he would not commit to a completion deadline.
“I have been on record for giving so many timelines, I am fearful of giving another, because I do believe in taking responsibility in terms of the timeline that I have been given by the technical people,” said Tufton.
“There has been too many missed timelines based on advice that I have been given, where I have become a non-believer in that technical advice.”
He is optimistic, however, that the ministry will break the back of the project by the end of 2021.