RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) chair­man Anil Go­sine and med­ical di­rec­tor Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon have ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions.

Go­sine con­firmed that he sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion last week, cit­ing per­son­al rea­sons, while Dr Cha­toor­goon said he want­ed to move in­to an area of health­care where he could help pa­tients re­solve con­cerns about ac­cess­ing ser­vices.

Go­sine, who pre­vi­ous­ly served in 2010-2016 as SWRHA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer for al­most six and a half years, said his re­cent 15-month tenure as SWRHA chair­man had fo­cused on strength­en­ing the au­thor­i­ty’s op­er­a­tions and en­sur­ing that pa­tients re­ceived prop­er care.

He said the board had re­viewed in­fra­struc­ture-re­lat­ed con­tracts and with­drawn sev­er­al that had been is­sued with­out prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“When we came in, there were con­tracts that went out with­out prop­er con­tract doc­u­ments and a lot of things were wrong. We man­aged to pull back quite a few of them to save mon­ey and to save the South­west em­bar­rass­ment,” Go­sine said.

He added that the board had al­so worked to re­store poli­cies and pro­ce­dures to en­sure mem­bers fol­lowed prop­er pro­to­cols in car­ry­ing out their du­ties.

Asked about the chal­lenges dur­ing his tenure, Go­sine said the pri­or­i­ty had been to fo­cus on the health sec­tor and the needs of pa­tients.

Go­sine said he had sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion to the min­is­ter and thanked him for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve. He had re­quest­ed that it take ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly but was await­ing an of­fi­cial re­sponse con­firm­ing the arrange­ments.

He al­so dis­missed sug­ges­tions that his health had prompt­ed his de­ci­sion to re­sign.

“I may not be well. I have my health is­sues, but it has noth­ing to do with my res­ig­na­tion,” he said.

Go­sine al­so said he re­mained will­ing to serve the coun­try in an­oth­er ca­pac­i­ty if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Mean­while, Dr Cha­toor­goon said he want­ed to help es­tab­lish a na­tion­al sys­tem through which pa­tients could re­li­ably seek as­sis­tance with con­cerns about their treat­ment and ac­cess to health­care ser­vices.

He said he had dis­cussed the pro­pos­al with the Min­is­ter of Health and was en­cour­aged by the min­is­ter’s in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing such a sys­tem.

Dr Cha­toor­goon said he had pre­vi­ous­ly in­tro­duced a feed­back mech­a­nism at SWRHA while serv­ing as med­ical di­rec­tor, plac­ing his name and tele­phone num­ber on hos­pi­tal and clin­ic walls so pa­tients could con­tact him di­rect­ly if they en­coun­tered prob­lems.

How­ev­er, he said a sin­gle con­tact num­ber was not a sus­tain­able so­lu­tion and the au­thor­i­ty had been de­vel­op­ing a broad­er sys­tem in­volv­ing cus­tomer re­la­tions of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in emer­gency de­part­ments and clin­ics.

Dr Cha­toor­goon said he be­lieved the sys­tem could have a greater im­pact if ex­pand­ed na­tion­al­ly, al­low­ing pa­tients to seek as­sis­tance with is­sues such as clin­ic ap­point­ments, di­ag­nos­tic tests and ac­cess to med­ica­tion.

Dr Cha­toor­goon said he hoped to con­tribute to de­vel­op­ing the sys­tem be­yond the bound­aries of the SWRHA.