THE Government is being urged to tread carefully in its plans to enter into arrangements with private health facilities to help clear the backlog of surgeries in the public health system.

Caution came from Opposition spokesman on health, Dr Morais Guy, in his 2022/23 sectoral speech to the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

“Although it is important to mitigate the suffering of the waiting patients, I urge the Government to proceed with caution,” he said, pointing to the effects of the partnership approach taken by the UK Government in 2000 when it signed an official treaty with the Independent Healthcare Association enabling National Health Service (NHS) patients in to be treated free in the private and voluntary health-care sector.

He also noted Sir Arthur Lewis Institute, 2012 study on the decentralisation and privatisation of health services in Trinidad and Tobago, which pointed out that privatising health services had weakened the main health-care provider, resulting in staff demotivation and resources being syphoned from basic health care, hampering improvements in the regional health services.

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton announced last week that the ministry will be partnering with health facilities in the private sector, to work through the backlog of surgeries, for which wait times have been pushed back even further, due to the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The ministry will be forging other partnerships with overseas medical missions, to target 10,000 surgeries over the next 10 months.

He said the aim is to have health-care professionals in the Diaspora who visit Jamaica for special surgery sessions given access to hospital facilities and focus on patients who have been waiting the longest for elective surgeries.

Patients who have been forced to endure the lengthiest wait times include those with cataract; oral, thyroid, and sinus cancers; cholesteatomas; pterygium arthroplasty, and undescended testis.

Dr Tufton said $300 million will be spent on repairs to and maintenance of operating theatres so that these can run more efficiently and for longer hours.

Meanwhile, the Opposition spokesman is also encouraging the Government to return some services, which the Regional Health Authorities (RHAs) now control, to the central ministry, as the resources for the delivery of health care is being strained due to the top-heavy management structure of the RHAs. He also pointed out that many services are being duplicated.

“Freed up funds could be used on actual patient care and/or employ more staff. Further, it is high time that the ministry removes the operations of laboratories and X-rays from the control of the RHA and implements a centralised control by the ministry. Too often, when there is a breakdown, the country is reminded that it is the RHA that has responsibility, which is invariably due to funding shortage. If they made the change, the ministry could not then act as an innocent bystander in the scheme of things,” Dr Guy argued.

He added that centralised control, with a direct officer responsible and with the support of the monitoring and repair unit, more facilities could be operational, resulting in less downtime with proper, computerised schedules.