‘No need yet’ for new hospital

Despite opening its doors nearly 60 years ago, then with about 460 beds, a leading administrator at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) said he did not believe a new hospital was needed to fix its problems.

Although declaring himself a proponent for a new facility, the QEH’s Director of Medical Services Anthony Harris said there was still some life left in the island’s lone general hospital. He pointed to the ramping up of services the QEH now offers compared to when it first opened its doors on November 14, 1964.

“Look around and you’ll see clues as to the thoughts and the problems that [the planners] had back then. If you notice it, there are like relaxation areas in the hospital . . . balconies that we don’t use anymore. In those days, it was a more sanatorium-type thing given the diseases that were around, which were mainly infectious diseases,” said Harris.

“We didn’t have a Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) or any such ICU-type beds. Dr Richie Haynes, later Sir Richard, was the one who opened a Medical ICU back in the 70s, 10 years later. And interestingly enough, he actually took the old TB Ward and converted it into the MICU. So that shows the evolution and how things were going over time.”

The QEH has introduced several high-end services to treat non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including an expanded Maternal Intensive Care Unit (MICU), a Surgical ICU, which allows the hospital to care for really ill surgical patients, a cardiac suite, a kidney dialysis unit, and an increase in the number of beds from 460 to over 600.

“There was no area for dialysis when it first started because that was not a big problem,” said Harris. “[The late] Professor [George} Nicholson, God bless his soul, started the dialysis unit with two chairs. Now we have 20-plus chairs [here] and we outsource some. So you can see how the NCDs have changed the whole thing.

“The paediatric wards used to be overcrowded. When I would have started in the 80s, it was still infectious diseases gastroenteritis in the paediatric ward that kept it full. Now, it’s the more sophisticated stuff. So, the hospital is changing and evolving. And we have over time, kept up with those changes putting the services in to match the requirements and the needs of the population.”

With public outcry over patient service delivery challenges including a lack of space, increased wait times in the Accident and Emergency Department, and a shortage of beds on the wards, there have been renewed calls for “a new, more modern” hospital to be built.

Harris told Barbados TODAY, that over time, the hospital had outgrown its location but the authorities were trying to evolve the hospital to keep track of the population’s needs.

“Are we a little bit behind? Probably,” said the hospital administrator. “The outpatient department has remained where it is since [its] inception. Now you see a crowded outpatient service, but even that we have been expanding slowly to keep up with the needs of the country. Do we need a new hospital? Well I, personally, am an advocate for that but I appreciate that that’s easy to say and very hard to do because, financially, a brand new hospital, I think the estimated costs [is the challenge].”

Harris referred to a study conducted between 2005 and 2007 by the Owen Arthur administration following similar calls for a new hospital on a greenfield site.

“Our current minister [Jerome] Walcott was the one, back in I think it was between 2005-2007, who had gotten a consultancy, and the question was renovate the hospital or build on a new site. What that showed was that the renovation and a new build were practically the same costs, but that cost was then $800 million.

“Now, I think we are talking of in the order of a billion Barbados dollars, half a billion US dollars for a new hospital. That would be the ballpark figure that we’re thinking. So it isn’t something that we can take lightly, and there are certainly those who feel that there’s still some life in this ‘old girl’ here and that we can still do a lot with it.”

He noted that the QEH had made numerous additions and renovations, including the Lion’s Eye Care Centre in the late 90s, to meet modern healthcare needs and environmental changes. Pointing to the Accident and Emergency Department, Harris also stressed that it was hoped in a couple of months, a “fully expanded” emergency care system would be more efficient and responsive.
(RG)