'Room full, ward full' - Persons admitted to the Spanish Town Hospital face long wait for beds

For the past week, Delroy Smalls has spent his days on a chair at the Spanish Town Hospital in St Catherine, hoping to be admitted to a ward, but with no available beds, there is no telling how many more days he will have to remain in that position.

Small is one of several patients who have been forced to make themselves comfortable on chairs placed in a section of the Type B facility which has no bed free.

"They were saying that he was going to go on a ward. They said they were going to admit him, and we carry clothes and everything, but he is still not admitted, because you can't say he is admitted without a bed. He is just there," Small's sister told The Sunday Gleaner.

Small has been at the hospital since last Monday, and up to Thursday, had already been given four bags of drips from his upright position on the chair.

"Even a while ago, him a say him back a hurt him because he is dying to lie down.

"It is quite a few of them in there because even one lady was there from Sunday. I am not sure if she has left as yet," added Small's sister.

When our news team visited the hospital last Thursday, three persons were seen lying on metal chairs in the Accident and Emergency area with intravenous cannulas on their hands, while two others were in wheelchairs.

The hospital's Chief Executive Officer Dwayne Francis said that despite their best efforts to populate every available space with beds, the hospital is currently struggling to accommodate patients on the wards.

"We have a challenge in terms of our current bed capacity, given that there has been no major change at the facility. So we are generally working with the same facility that was built many years ago, but we have tried as best as possible to add additional beds into the ward areas to increase our capacity," said Francis.

He said that the hospital which had 277 beds when it was opened in the 1950s currently has 431 beds.

NO MORE BED SPACE

"The challenge with the institution's bed space is real, but it is not a lack of beds, because if I need beds, I could get beds in a jiffy ... the problem is where you are going to place those beds," said the CEO.

He added that all of the hospital's existing space has been maximised to meet the increasing demand for services at the institution as the population in St Catherine expands.

Last August, the hospital created an overflow ward where persons rerouted from Accident and Emergency are able to get treatment. The facility is air-conditioned and is equipped with piped oxygen, equipment, and a high-dependency unit.

"I can tell you, that area is full and that area is full every day," said Francis.

"That area, when we opened it, was to accommodate those patients who are in the A&E and are waiting for bed spaces, and what we have seen since then is that we have had over 200 patients being discharged from that location and not reaching the ward.

"Their course of treatment was carried out at the overflow area, which was, in essence, done for them to wait on their bed space on the ward," added Francis.

He said that the administrators of the hospital have reached out to the charity organisation Food For The Poor for assistance, and representatives of that organisation visited the facility in February to do an assessment.

"We have applied to see how best we can get a board-structured ward that could accommodate 30 beds, with all the amenities for a ward done in the proper way to meet infection-control standards and also to be able to pass public-health standards," explained Francis.

He said that these are just short-term measures until plans to upgrade the hospital to a Type A facility are actualised.

nadine.wilson@gleanerjm.com