WESTERN BUREAU:

WITH THE cost of renovating the Cornwall Regional Hospital’s [CRH] in Montego Bay now at a whopping $14.1 billion, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton is still insisting that renovating, instead of following the recommendation of some stakeholders to build a new hospital, was the right decision.

“First of all, I hold to the position that we did the right thing, even though we had to rescope [the work for CRH]. We had an incremental approach, and we did not have a choice,” explained Tufton, while addressing an online Zoom press conference about the CRH project yesterday. “We had 450 people in beds in the hospital, and we were serving an entire region, so we had no alternative at the time.”

The initial cost of renovating the 400-bed Type A hospital, which started being plagued by a noxious fumes issue in late 2016, was put at $5 billion. However, the cost was revised to $10.5 billion via an announcement in the budget presentation last October.

“It theoretically sounds good to say, ‘hit down the building and build a new building’. But I do not know if you know what demolition involves on a compound, especially when you have a very active hospital arrangement; it just does not work and it is not practical,” continued Tufton.

“If we could take all those services and put them in a hospital setting or convert one major building into a hospital and just rid the compound of all human activity, then that probably could move from theory to practice, but the reality is that we could not do it, and as I said in those early days, people would die,” he added.

Interestingly, it should be noted that in 2019, Professor Archibald Gordon, the then-chairman of the CRH restoration project oversight committee, stated that building a new hospital would cost $30 billion, which was significantly more than the projected repair cost at the time. However, the current $14.1 billion price tag is again raising concern about whether repair or replacement was the better option.

According to Tufton, the new $14.1 prize tag will see $10.5 billion going towards the construction process, $2.5 billion for new equipment, and $1.1 billion for technical services. He said the new costing is due to updated information given to the Ministry of Health by the project contractor.

“The cost associated with the final phase of rehabilitation, phase three, has been a subject of some discussion and some concerns, with assumptions being made around ballooning costs and cost overruns as opposed to rescoping of the project,” said Tufton. “Part of the challenge with the concerns that have been expressed is that it fails to account for the fact that the CRH in the future, based on the work that is being done, will be a different CRH from what we started off with, which was a sick building.”