The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Fyz­abad, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe MP, is urg­ing Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) to set up bet­ter out­pa­tient care sys­tems, in the wake of long lines of pa­tients re­cent­ly seen at the out­pa­tient clin­ics in both the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) and the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

In a strong­ly word­ed re­lease, the Fyz­abad MP points out that the RHAs need to “fun­da­men­tal­ly re­view how they process pa­tients at out­pa­tient clin­ics”, re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to the sit­u­a­tion on Mon­day April 19th at the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal—the sub­ject of a Guardian Me­dia re­port. 

“This in­ci­dent comes on the heel of sim­i­lar com­plaints at the NCRHA out­pa­tient clin­ics about two months ago.  The large num­bers of pa­tients gath­ered at the en­trance of the out­pa­tient de­part­ment with­out ad­e­quate phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, iron­i­cal­ly, puts them and oth­ers at risk of con­tract­ing and or spread­ing COVID-19 at a health­care in­sti­tu­tion,” Dr Bo­doe points out in his state­ment.

“This is es­pe­cial­ly wor­ri­some at a time when the health au­thor­i­ties are re­port­ing in­creas­ing num­bers of COVID-19 cas­es, in­clud­ing the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Brazil P1 vari­ant,” he says.

Ac­cord­ing to the Op­po­si­tion MP, the hos­pi­tal man­age­ment failed to recog­nise a cri­sis in the mak­ing, as the “block sys­tem of ap­point­ment, where pa­tients are giv­en spe­cif­ic times to at­tend the clin­ics… ob­vi­ous­ly col­lapsed yes­ter­day”.

And he ar­gues that this man­age­ment fail­ure put many lives at risk.

“The fail­ure of man­age­ment, in­clud­ing hos­pi­tal se­cu­ri­ty to recog­nise ear­ly the im­pend­ing cri­sis meant that the po­lice had to be called in to re­store or­der, putting po­lice of­fi­cers them­selves at risk of catch­ing the virus,” he ob­serves.

The Fyz­abad MP al­so ex­pressed con­cern that the nor­mal health­care sys­tem is fail­ing many pa­tients, even as the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem is treat­ing with COVID-19 cas­es.

Not­ing that many more peo­ple will be us­ing the pub­lic health care sys­tem be­cause of strait­ened eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances wors­ened by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Dr Bo­doe says RHA man­age­ment must op­er­ate proac­tive­ly and pre-emp­tive­ly.

“Some in that crowd yes­ter­day could very well have been those seek­ing new ap­point­ments for post­poned surg­eries... The sys­tem for mak­ing new ap­point­ments which cur­rent­ly re­quires the pa­tient or nom­i­nee to phys­i­cal­ly go to the out­pa­tient de­part­ment to se­cure an ap­point­ment can be im­proved with the use of tech­nol­o­gy for vir­tu­al in­ter­views,” he ar­gues.

Dr Bo­doe is call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Health to hold the SWRHA CEO ac­count­able for yes­ter­day’s chaos in the out­pa­tient clin­ics.

And in ad­di­tion to guar­an­tee­ing hos­pi­tal staff and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als the re­sources they need to pro­vide qual­i­ty ser­vice at the in­sti­tu­tions, the Op­po­si­tion MP as­serts that the health min­is­ter must en­sure the swift ap­point­ment of a new SWRHA Board of Di­rec­tors, to guide pol­i­cy im­ple­men­ta­tion.