Do the Min­istry of Health and Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go have a full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the op­er­a­tions of the pri­vate med­ical in­dus­try, in­clu­sive of hos­pi­tals, clin­ics, labs and as­so­ci­at­ed agen­cies? Is there suf­fi­cient mon­i­tor­ing by the es­tab­lished su­per­vi­so­ry bod­ies of the ever-bal­loon­ing pri­vate health sec­tor and how it op­er­ates? Are there suf­fi­cient safe­guards for pa­tients to re­ceive the qual­i­ty of health ser­vice be­ing of­fered? Are the well-be­ing and lives of pa­tients who seek and re­ceive health ser­vices suf­fi­cient­ly in fo­cus and not pre-dom­i­nat­ed over­whelm­ing­ly by the prof­it mo­tive?

Crit­i­cal­ly, are there de­vel­oped stan­dards to which the pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tions have to ad­here to re­gard­ing of­fer­ing and pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty ser­vices to con­sumers? And are there mech­a­nisms to en­sure what is paid for is what is re­ceived?

To en­sure the right to qual­i­ty ser­vice paid for at great cost, there needs to be a kind of health om­buds­man to which those us­ing the ser­vices of med­ical in­sti­tu­tions can file com­plaints if and when they have is­sues.

The same will al­so ap­ply to state-run health in­sti­tu­tions from the lev­el of com­mu­ni­ty-based fa­cil­i­ties to the ma­jor hos­pi­tals across the coun­try. Such mon­i­tor­ing and in­ves­tiga­tive agen­cies will sure­ly con­tribute to an in­crease in the qual­i­ty of health­care and so too a mon­i­tor­ing of the cost borne by the con­sumer for the ser­vices.

The above ques­tions and mat­ters have be­come rel­e­vant in the midst of yet an­oth­er pub­lic health scare of deep con­cern, that be­ing the spread of the dengue virus na­tion­wide. It has been re­port­ed and sup­port­ed by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als of pri­vate hos­pi­tals that there is quite an amount of “cash­ing-in” on the out­break of the mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease.

That com­ment has come from for­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, who is a part-own­er at one such pri­vate health fa­cil­i­ty. He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion in quite busi­ness-fo­cused terms, not­ing that the “pri­vate labs ba­si­cal­ly make a lot of mon­ey.”

But as must sure­ly be ful­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed by Dr Khan, lab re­sults are sent/tak­en to the doc­tors and the hos­pi­tals, who then get their share of the pie by pro­vid­ing the need­ed health­care.

Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, pri­vate med­ical hos­pi­tals, and doc­tors in pri­vate prac­tice, are ab­solute­ly need­ed in cir­cum­stances in which the state-owned and op­er­at­ed hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres are not suf­fi­cient to the task. And this is so not on­ly in terms of num­bers of peo­ple us­ing the fa­cil­i­ties, but per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion with the ser­vice re­ceived by pa­tients and the time frame with­in which it is giv­en.

The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, there­fore, sits square­ly with the State through the Min­istry of Health, be­ing un­able to pro­vide at least the quan­ti­ty of health­care to the pop­u­la­tion, to en­sure that what is be­ing giv­en by the pri­vate sec­tor meets the high­est stan­dards pos­si­ble and in keep­ing with the costs paid.

Sure, there is com­pe­ti­tion amongst the pri­vate hos­pi­tals, at least in the­o­ry, to keep them con­scious that pa­tients have op­tions, but it is al­so pos­si­ble for car­tel-like be­hav­iour by the pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions.

This is not an ac­cu­sa­tion and con­dem­na­tion of the pri­vate hos­pi­tals, but rather a call on the Min­istry of Health to en­sure that qual­i­ty and rea­son­ably priced pri­vate health ser­vices are avail­able to the pop­u­la­tion in this time of need by cit­i­zens.