A blistering attack on UNC

Health Minister Colm Imbert yesterday delivered a blistering attack on the “antiquated, outdated and retrograde” practices of the Medical Board, disclosing that one of the  major “ringleaders”, who featured prominently  in the doctors strike, defeated UNC candidate Dr Anirudh. Mahabir, cost the government some $577,000 during a strike. He was piloting the Medical Board Amendment bill in the House of Representatives. He said it was “a ridiculous situation where a small group (of doctors) were determining who practise in the public hospitals and who did not. “It would be irresponsible for us not to take affirmative action to deal with the critical shortage of doctors in the country,” he said, to loud desk-thumping. “It would be irresponsible of us not to put an end to the ridiculous situation where you have doctors sending in sick leave certificates in the public sector, signed by other doctors and then they are working in the private hospitals on the same day,” he said. Saying that a bill of $2.3 million was run up as patients had to be transferred to private hospitals during the doctors strike, Imbert said: “The bombshell (Mahabir) was responsible for a bill of  $557,000 — Surgi-Med Clinic, sent to the Ministry of Health. While he was a ringleader in the strike, sending patients to his own private hospital. This is what we have to deal with —  conflict of interest,” he said.

He said senior doctors in the public health system, who had private hospitals, were sending patients to these hospitals, and then sending a bill back to the public system. “And they kept a patient although we told them after the strike to bring back all the patients. They say post-operative complications.  They keep the patient in the private institution for three months and send us a bill for $111,000. One patient. That is the conflict of interest situation they have to deal with and that is why this legislation is necessary,” he said. Imbert gave the Parliament a detailed account of the kind of difficulty he had getting the Board to accept the idea of registering Cuban doctors and to accept the concept that lay persons should be included in its membership. He said the Government could not sit and wait for “this little group of himself who elect himself” to come around to the progressive systems employed in other countries. Imbert said it took the Medical Board 18 months to begin to “condescend” to the idea of registering Cuban doctors. But even after this, it imposed conditions for registering these doctors which it didn’t impose for other foreign doctors, Imbert noted. These conditions included that the doctor must have five years postgraduate experience, be in good standing with the Cuban medical board, must be certified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as being fluent in English, must only practice in the public service and must be supervised by a special medical officer, a performance appraisal must be forwarded to the Medical Board every three months, including a report on the competence to practice medicine and the ability to speak English. Imbert said none of these conditions were imposed on other foreign doctors.

Imbert said the Council also opposed the “progressive” idea of having lay persons as part of its membership. “If yuh hear noise, men fall down around the table [saying] ‘Lay people! No doctor?’’ He said after he showed them the evidence that the greater medical council in England, the boards all over the world  had lay people, he conceded “after nine months” to three members on the Board. “And check who the three are. The Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, a lawyer from the Law Association and the Chief Medical Officer, none of whom are chosen by the Government and two of whom would be doctors. “That is their idea of lay people,” Imbert said. Stating that the Medical Board was “stuck in a 1950 colonial mindset where they believe it must be himself to himself.” Imbert said they were fighting to preserve a system which no other country in the world used. In the US, Imbert said, all the medical boards were selected by governors, who are politicians elected by popular vote. In Australia, New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries  board  members were lay people, selected by politicans. He  went through the list of foreign universities which “this arbitrary” Council had registered persons from without any conditions. Imbert slammed the UNC for continuing the “cronyism and the closed shop” saying that it was the PNM which had the courage to revolutionise health care.

On top of all this, Government had to deal with the “mischief” being planted “every day” into the newspaper by doctors who had agendas.  He said one of the senior members of MPATT who,  just like Mahabir, had argued that she was not interested in  any politicial position, wanting to become a UNC senator. Imbert said that after four strikes in 12 months, the country was seeing that one by one “they are UNC candidates.” The Board, which is currently exclusively comprised of doctors, was determined not to register the Cuban doctors, he noted. And when Government sought to deal with the chronic shortage of doctors in Trinidad by seeking to bring in Cuban and United Nations volunteers, the Board placed all the “spurious arguments” for not wanting to register these persons. Noting the Board came up with “this foolishness” that it did not register persons who qualified in non-English-speaking territories, Imbert said he produced evidence that the daughter of a former UNC Minister, Daphne Phillips, who studied medicine in Cuba and was registered by the very Board. “They feel we don’t know, you know. That is the thing with members opposite and their friends and supporters,” he said. He said the “next excuse” was that her native tongue was English. He added that during the UNC tenure, that government also sent people on scholarship to study in Cuba. He noted that the Veterinary Board refused to register Jennifer Jones-Kernaham, who was trained as a vet in Cuba.Saying that there was a shortage of 250 doctors in the public service, Imbert said he was hearing the “ludicrious” statement that the way to deal with the chronic shortage was not to bring in foreign doctors. Saying that it took five years to train a doctor, Imbert said: “You can’t just go to PriceSmart or Hilo and pick up a medical practitioner.”