Port Maria Hospital gets new elevator

Hundreds of persons are now benefiting from a new elevator provided to the Port Maria Hospital in St Mary, at a cost of $20 million.

Financed by the Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) Fund, the new elevator is improving the wellness journey of patients and service delivery of staff.

 Regional Director at the North East Regional Health Authority (NERHA), Fabia Lamm, told JIS News that the previous elevator was between 25 and 30 years old. 

The hospital noted downtime of 80 per cent over the last two years and an increase in the number of patients receiving care at the facility. 

Patients and heavy equipment had to be carried by staff up the stairs to facilitate provision of service, which was not ideal. 

“The previous elevator had done its time. We were repairing it frequently, but it was basically becoming irreparable and obsolete. In looking at that, we started a procurement process in 2020 to replace it with a more modern two-stop elevator that would satisfy the need at the hospital, which has two floors,” Lamm.

 Port Maria Hospital is a 60-bed Type C Public General Hospital that offers a range of health services, including Accident & Emergency (A&E), General Medicine, Paediatrics, Maternity, Radiology, Laboratory, Dietary and Day Services. 

The hospital operates with a staff complement of 170 persons and is located centrally in the parish.

With physical lifting proving strenuous to staff at the facility and impeding the ability to provide services in an efficient manner, it was critical for NERHA to work towards getting an elevator.

Lamm said scoping work was carried out to determine the needs of the hospital. 

“What we needed was an elevator from the ground level, which would be the A&E Department, to the second floor, which has the wards. We scoped the design to facilitate an elevator that was big enough to hold not just staff moving from one floor to the other, but large enough as well to transport a patient in a stretcher or a wheelchair,” she said. 

The scope of work revealed the need for a two-stop elevator just shy of $20 million in value. 

“We went through the procurement process and based on bidding, the successful bidder's cost came out at $19.97 million. That contractor was Jamaica Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Limited. Having reached that far in the procurement process, the next step was to look at funding this contract,” she said.

- JIS News 

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