HEALTH Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has pushed back at accusations that poor planning is behind the lengthy rehabilitation of Cornwall Regional Hospital, stating that those making such claims are either deliberately causing mischief or ignorant about what has transpired.

With an initial budget of $2 billion, renovation costs at the St James hospital have ballooned to over $21 billion, with the minister telling the Jamaica Observer that the phased reopening of the upgraded facility is scheduled to begin mid-April.

Opposition spokesperson on health, Dr Alfred Dawes has openly criticised the long process, and issued several calls for an audit into the rehabilitation of the hospital to ensure accountability and efficient use of taxpayers’ funds.

Dawes argued that the project has been plagued by escalating costs and indefinite variations in scope. Meanwhile, former Opposition spokesman on health Dr Morais Guy also listed poor planning as the reason for the missed deadlines.

Tufton explained that the project’s initial focus was to address water infiltration and mould growth, but issues with structural integrity and lack of maintenance also emerged, leading to a rescoping of the rehabilitation process.

“To understand Cornwall’s problem you have to look way back before 2016 — maybe five or seven years before. When the problem at Cornwall started, the ventilation system being contaminated and poor maintenance would be the primary reason for the facility getting to the point of collapse because, over the years, they had not been maintained,” the health minister said.

“When we took office in 2016 and the air conditioning system emerged again as a problem, we had initially took the position to fix that system but soon realised that the problems were a lot more than that — again due to poor maintenance,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Tufton said they had to, therefore, strip the entire building down.

“So while we had to recalibrate or go back to the drawing board, it wasn’t so much out of poor planning as it was out of a decision by the Government to just fix the problem once and for all and literally build a new Cornwall Regional,” the minister explained.

Tufton said that plan was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which put a pause on the project for three years.

“That’s not poor planning, that’s just that we had to shift our emphasis to saving lives, and building COVID wards, and restricting people from moving. The Chinese company, for example, at Western Children and Adolescents Hospital, many of them went back to their homeland and nothing could be done really on the Cornwall side — so, again, it really was the need to adjust to a situation in the environment. But, once we restarted we had the plan we were implementing, and that is what is happening now,” he shared.

The health minister also provided clarity regarding the associated costs around the rehabilitation of
Cornwall Regional Hospital being more linked to the rescoping of the project than inflation.

“I think many people keep confusing — some deliberately so, like the Opposition — overrun with rescoping. The primary adjustment in costs has been because of the rescoping where we are now building a new hospital that is on track, and the manifestation of that will be witnessed when the project is completed.

“While we regret the delays the truth is [that] we had three years of COVID when nothing happened so, again, even in terms of the time you would have to extract three years from the time we started to now to get a more accurate reflection as to how long it has taken,” he reasoned.

The redevelopment of Cornwall Regional Hospital had an original timeline of April 2019 to March 2023. The end date was pushed to March 2025, then again to March 2027.

According to the estimates of expenditure for the fiscal year 2025/2026, roof repairs, demolition, and structural repairs to floors seven to nine, structural repairs to the basement and floors one to six, rehabilitation of water tanks, and construction of roof for atria have been completed. Designs for phase three of the redevelopment of the hospital have also been completed as well as renovation of the administration department.

More than $5 billion has been set aside for the upcoming fiscal year to continue work at the 10-storey, 400-bed capacity, baby-friendly, multidisciplinary institution.

Despite multiple changes to the completion date, the phased reopening is imminent.

“It will happen in April because I think they have completed their air quality tests and are now looking at internal furnishing. The monies assigned to Cornwall Regional [for the upcoming fiscal year] will continue the build-out — which is a floor-by-floor build-out this year — so partitions, a new accident and emergency department that is twice the size that is under construction [and] linked or on the main building, the different floors, having to put in operation theatres and all of that,” he told the Sunday Observer.

In addition to Cornwall Regional Hospital, the minister has announced development plans for Spanish Town Hospital, University Hospital of the West Indies, as well as the construction of a new hospital in Portmore, St Catherine.

He’s confident that these projects will not face similar delays as those experienced at Cornwall Regional.

“The others that are being built clearly are not going to be affected, hopefully not, by a sort of global pandemic like COVID, which shuts down everything. We don’t expect those kinds of delays [because] these are greenfield sites as opposed to brownfield sites,” said Tufton.

He explained that “greenfield sites” are those that start from scratch, while “brownfield sites” are renovations.

“Greenfield sites are a lot more efficiently implemented because you are starting from scratch. The old buildings tend to have unexpected situations, and those can lead to variations in time, so I’m confident that the ones that are greenfield are going to be built in a much more efficient way, and we will see completion close to or in and around the time that was scheduled. I mean, you have to cater to unexpected occurrences [as] there could be a hurricane or something like that, hopefully not, but there could be,” said the minister.