THERE has been a decline in bed capacity at Bellevue Hospital, Cornwall Regional Hospital and Kingston Public Hospital over a five-year period, according to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin).

Data provided by Statin, which is said to have been sourced from the Ministry of Health, suggests that all three hospitals have seen a decline in beds between 2015 and 2019.

Statin said that Bellevue Hospital’s bed capacity went from 796 beds to 676; Cornwall Regional Hospital from 400 to 256; and Kingston Public Hospital from 556 to 531.

However, chief medical officer (CMO) in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie has questioned the veracity of the number of beds given for KPH.

“I don’t know that that is true,” she told the Jamaica Observer in an interview at Jamaica Pegasus hotel on Wednesday.

“What I do know is that at Kingston Public Hospital there was a ward — the Upper Nuttall Ward — that we have been refurbishing to become a high-dependency unit. So, it was a medical ward and each of the medical wards at KPH normally has about 32 beds so I don’t know if that is the decrease, because those beds have not been active for a while as we prepare that to become a high-dependency unit. I would have to check further to see if there was an actual decrease outside of that.”

In 2016, then acting senior medical officer for the KPH, Dr Natalie Whylie stated that the hospital had a bed capacity of 475.

As it relates to the decline recorded at Bellevue Hospital, “we have been moving Bellevue from a chronic care facility to become an acute and sub-acute care facility”, Dr Bisasor-McKenzie stated. “So, the chronic beds we have been decreasing over time as we try to ensure that the management of patients remains at the acute and sub-acute care; we would not have been admitting more patients to the chronic care unit.”

According to an official at Bellevue, patients who are no longer in the acute phase of their illness, but not yet recovered to the point where they could be discharged from the facility, are offered further treatment on the sub-acute wards.

There are three sub-acute wards at the facility. Of these, two are male wards with a total bed complement of 74 and there is one female ward with a bed complement of 28.

At Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, the current renovation being done accounts for the decline in beds. as work is currently being done to the main building in the nurses’ and doctors’ quarters.

Dr Delroy Fray, clinical coordinator at Cornwall Regional, had told the Sunday Observer that due to the renovations being done, the hospital was using tents.

Dr Derek Harvey, senior medical officer at the facility, had said that there were also criticisms from doctors.

St Ann’s Bay Hospital has seen an increase in beds, going up from 271 to 306 in 2019 according to Statin. It is one of the largest increases recorded.

On Wednesday the Ministry of Health revealed upcoming infrastructure works and upgraded designs for 13 health facilities islandwide, including St Ann’s Bay Hospital.

Khalid Peart, site superintendent for St Ann, told the Sunday Observer that the project intervention would not specifically affect bed capacity in terms of the wards.

“What it would specifically address is some of the support services because, presently, St Ann has a high rate of referrals because of the absence of an ICU [intensive care unit],” he said.

“Even though there is a surgical department there, there’s not a present ICU that can complement it. That’s one of the major interventions that are planned, as well as the improvement in the diagnostic services, so an entire new suite that offers MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] and X-ray was proposed.”

Bisasor-McKenzie, however, said the project will address the “issue of bed capacity” in two ways, one of which is primary health-care strengthening.

“What it is that we want to do is reduce the need for hospital beds. Right now, we have an issue where we don’t have full resolution of problems there so people tend to end up in hospitals. The project is not just addressing infrastructure, it is also addressing policies in terms of how we care and how we manage, how it is that we continue medical education for health-care workers to make them more equipped to deal with the noncommunicable diseases in the primary health-care system,” she said.

“It also increases the equipment and the adjunctive services that people would normally have to go to hospitals to get. It increases that in the primary care system so, therefore, you are more likely to have control of your medical illnesses and better management — so it decreases the need for the hospital beds.”

Bisasor-McKenzie said the ministry was also “putting in 100 extra beds at Spanish Town Hospital, so there will be an increase in the number of beds as well”.

According to Statin, Spanish Town Hospital went up from 386 beds in 2015 to 432 in 2019.