Chief Executive Officer of the BVI Health Services Authority, Mrs Darlene Carty-Baptiste has admitted that the Authority is currently not meeting the health care expectations of patients and that the state of distrust extends to even it's own staff members. Photo: VINO

The CEO had no reservation in admitting the grey areas of health care in the Virgin Islands while the guest of honour at the most recent Luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club of Tortola, which was held at the Moorings.

The Authority oversees a staff compliment of 487 of which approximately 267 are within the hospital setting, and 127 across all areas of nursing. However, the physician pool, Mrs Carty-Baptiste said, is considerably limited.

"Yes, there is an expectation for greater service, we understand that and we are positioning ourselves for that educationally and professionally overall to provide optimal quality health care and meet the expectations of the public at large," said Mrs Carty- Baptiste

"A lot of the complaints go into the system because they are not meeting the expectations of persons," she admitted while noting that the national standard is 60-90 overall but the management is looking at increasing the threshold for that.

The CEO said that during the first thirty days of carrying out an assessment of health care in the Territory it was glaring that the public did not trust the services offered at the hospital neither did the hospital's very employees. "So we are going ahead and doing rounds with each one of the units, talking with them asking them what are we doing wrong what can we do better and getting them to be part of the decision making process."

While noting that change is not likely to be seen over the remaining months better can be expected to be visible come 2014. "It's not just words for us, we really, really want to provide excellent service to the people of this Territory. They deserve, they demand it, they require it."

The new BVIHSA CEO said the Authority is adapting to the principle of being proactive as opposed to being reactive. "If something goes wrong we are going to take ownership, it is our fault, we will address it in real time."

On the report of expanding health care services, Rotarian Abby O'Neal popped the question of when Peebles Hospital would be equipped with a "good" MRI machine, to which Mrs Carty-Baptiste informed that "it is in the making".

BVIHSA owed $25M

Currently, the BVIHSA is owed some $25M with some $6.1M being fir overseas care dating back to 1999. "It is real, those numbers are really high. This in particular, individual with support staff will be very aggressive with legal council to pursue those persons who owe the BVI agency."

In addressing key areas of health care services, a contract was signed with HEMA, which will see the expanding of some key areas since, according to the CEO, as there has been a steady increase in the number of patients requiring Dialysis treatment hence the urgency for Nephrology.

Mrs Carty-Baptiste also said the Authority is working towards changing the mindset of the institution from being heavily subsidized by government.

She said one of the biggest campaigns is called "Going Green", which has seen the reduction of the use of paper considerably. "Right now we are looking at trending where within the last couple of months we have reduced our consumption by at least $10,000.00 a month as it relates to paper consumption within the organization, so that is really remarkable for us."

It was also disclosed that the management of Peebles Hospital is expecting to move into the new hospital come 2014. 

During her discourse with Rotarians and other guests, she dispelled as a vicious rumour the claim that the health centre at North Sound, Virgin Gorda was on the verge of being closed. She explained that consequent of an incident that had occurred at the clinic in the Valley, they were forced to pull resources at North Sound because of demand. She explained that on one day half of the Valley staff was out with the flu and more than half had gastro-enteritis. "So you can tell how replenished we were in that particular location. So again it was just a matter of demand and the hours were reduced for just two hours," said the CEO.