Abandoned ‘patients’ burden hospitals

Both the elderly and young,  abandoned by their families at the nation’s major hospitals, are creating a burden on the health system because they do not require medical attention, said Valerie Alleyne-Rawlins, acting Director of Health Services/Quality Management at the Health Ministry. Speaking at the Community Care Development Workshop, in Amphitheatre A, Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex Friday, the official cited a 1995 study, which found that 80 percent of the patients at the St James Medical Complex “were in need primarily of personal care and not nursing and medical care.”

The patient population at the complex comprises mainly elderly patients. Reading Health Minister John Rahael’s speech in his absence, Alleyne-Rawlins said children have been abandoned by their families or guardians at the paediatric units of the hospitals. She said the gap in public care presented a genuine problem. “These individuals are forcibly institutionalised and their presence at these institutions creates a tremendous burden because, in essence, secondary and tertiary health institutions are designed to provide acute critical care and not daily maintenance services.” The Community Care Programme is a component of the Health Sector Reform Programme and was designed to provide more appropriate care for the elderly and children with mental and/or physical disabilities abandoned at public health facilities.

Among the objectives of the programme are: enabling individuals to remain at home where possible and be cared for in a smaller “more home-like” environment within communities,  supporting friends and family providing care, and providing the most cost-effective package to meet the needs and wishes of those being helped. Alleyne-Rawlins said the main goal of community care is to bring the individual as close to home and community as possible. In cases where the home environment is not the most appropriate setting, community institutions would be the next viable solution. She said a client assessment-screening test has been developed “so that patients from the targetted hospitals were assessed and categorised, based on the level of care required.” Technical workshops have also taken place to develop models of care for the elderly in communities.