THE crowding of the Accident and Emergency Department with non- emergency issues; the sluggish removal of discharged patients and the abandonment of the elderly are some of the main challenges affecting the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).

On Tuesday GPHC’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) George Lewis said that with the number of persons seeking help at the city hospital increasing annually, the highlighted challenges all eventually contribute to the issue of limited space.

“I would want to believe, as the CEO of the hospital, that that is so because people feel a sense of confidence in the medical service and they also are becoming more health conscious. And, because they are becoming more health conscious, persons are making efforts to seek the doctors, deal with complaints rather than waiting for when it really gets bad,” he said.

“The hospital hasn’t gotten bigger, so if you have more persons demanding the services then we would end up in problems in terms of space,” Lewis highlighted.

When it comes to this sore issue of inadequate space, Lewis said that those who crowd the Accident and Emergency Department with minor issues are not making the situation any better for themselves or the hospital. “It is ‘emergency’ services. The Accident and Emergency Department is meant to attend to certain types of patients; trauma types of patients; accidents and so on. But, the person who has a common cold, that is not the best place to go. The place to go is the Medical Outpatient Department,” he stressed.

“If you go to the Accident and Emergency Department you may be there before other persons, but if there is a person that goes to the Accident and Emergency Department with a pain in their [sic] chest or a from multiple accidents with broken legs and bleeding, you the person that goes there with a headache will not be attended to. The priority will go to the person whose life is threatened.”

Lewis says that this concept is where the issue occurs as many persons still go to the Accident and Emergency Department expecting immediate care, but often become frustrated when they observe others being attended to in a selective manner.
Lewis then continued: “Another challenge that we have is where patients are discharged, but then their relatives and loved ones are not coming quickly enough to take them home; and if a bed is occupied, then we have patients who would like [to have] that bed [but can’t have it].”

GPHC NOT A GERIACTRIC HOME
Meanwhile, he stated that several others are using the hospital as a safe bet to abandon their ageing loved ones.

Lewis stated: “In some cases, particularly the elderly, those patients are abandoned in the hospital. We have a policy where we can’t [remove] the person; so what we’re doing is to work with Social Services to see if we can find placement for these persons.”
In making the hospital’s position clear, the CEO called on citizens to do better by taking care of their loved ones after the doctors and nurses have done their part.

“Georgetown Hospital is an institution where we try to make people better. It’s not a geriatric home where we can keep persons for extended periods of time. So, I’d like to appeal to members of the public; I’d like to appeal to members of the press to please help us to make relatives more conscious about the challenges that we have; and I ask that relatives seek to look after the elderly and not abandon them at the Georgetown Public Hospital,” he urged.