Bar­ri­ers were erect­ed at the Mt Hope hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, just hours af­ter the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) is­sued a state­ment ad­vis­ing of a fresh re­sponse to the larg­er num­ber of peo­ple turn­ing up at its hos­pi­tals.

The de­ci­sion to change its re­sponse ap­proach came fol­low­ing an emer­gency meet­ing held by the NCRHA’s board.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that the bar­ri­ers are meant to help the hos­pi­tal’s man­age­ment con­trol the num­ber of walk-in pa­tients, in what ap­pears to be a strain on the reg­u­lar health sys­tem as the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem set up to han­dle COVID-19 cas­es stretch­es to near burst­ing point.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the NCRHA said it was seek­ing to im­prove its COVID-19 test­ing and care fol­low­ing is­sues with a record-break­ing in­flux of per­sons at its fa­cil­i­ties.  

The NCRHA re­vealed that the au­thor­i­ty held an emer­gency meet­ing to dis­cuss is­sues on Sat­ur­day, in di­rect re­sponse to prob­lems caused by a re­cent 300 per cent in­crease in pos­i­tive cas­es and the as­so­ci­at­ed de­mand for test­ing. 

“We iden­ti­fied that bot­tle­necks emerged dur­ing the wave which re­sult­ed in some con­ges­tion in gen­er­al in­take. Our mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team met un­til late last night to re­think our sys­tems and to make the nec­es­sary al­ter­ations and con­se­quent im­prove­ments to the pa­tient and staff ex­pe­ri­ence,” NCRHA chief ex­ec­u­tive Davlin Thomas said. 

While the NCRHA not­ed that it had al­ready im­ple­ment­ed many of the dis­cussed in­ter­ven­tions, yes­ter­day, it not­ed that some were al­ready on their way due to pri­or plan­ning. 

It said that the im­prove­ments in­clude adapt­ing in­her­ent ca­pac­i­ty to test at a quick­er rate, us­ing the NCRHA’s am­bu­lances to sup­ple­ment those pro­vid­ed by the State’s in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor GM­RTT, adding bar­ri­er sys­tems to seg­re­gate COVID-19 pa­tients from oth­er pa­tients, and adding toi­let fa­cil­i­ties at the Ch­agua­nas Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex to ac­com­mo­date the in­flux. 

The NCRHA added that signs have al­so been in­stalled at COVID-19 test­ing sites to pre­vent in­ter­min­gling be­tween sus­pect­ed COVID-19 in­fect­ed per­sons and reg­u­lar pa­tients and that tent fa­cil­i­ties were out­fit­ted with sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions, ded­i­cat­ed doff­ing and don­ning ar­eas for staff in pro­tec­tive suits, and breath­able struc­ture lin­ing for un­ob­struct­ed air­flow. 

“They are al­so ful­ly out­fit­ted with elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties and con­tain ful­ly stocked and func­tion­al re­sus­ci­ta­tion room equipped with crash cart, oxy­gen, and de­fib­ril­la­tor,” the re­lease said. 

The NCRHA al­so not­ed that since May 12, over 20 new pa­tient care as­sis­tants and cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives were added to the front-line to re­duce clin­i­cal load and to en­sure each pa­tient is giv­en ad­e­quate spe­cialised care and at­ten­tion. 

“The cav­al­ry was al­ready on the way and they have ar­rived to­day. In ad­di­tion to the in­fra­struc­tur­al adap­ta­tions, we have added an army of pa­tient care as­sis­tants and CSRs in­to the sys­tem...We will con­tin­ue to equip our­selves as we en­gage in the fight of our lives,” Thomas said in the re­lease. 

It thanked its staff for work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly since the pan­dem­ic be­gan, last year. 

“No ef­forts have been spared and no time has been wast­ed in en­sur­ing that the NCRHA of­fers every pa­tient their best pos­si­ble chance...Our col­lec­tive faith is the reser­voir from which our re­solves will con­tin­ue to draw sus­te­nance,” the re­lease said. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that based on the cur­rent rate of in­fec­tion, it takes be­tween six and 10 days for a per­son to re­ceive the re­sults of their poly­merase chain re­ac­tion (PCR) test through the pub­lic health care sys­tem.