Exploiters in health care

THE EXPLOITATION of patients suffering from serious ailments, particularly those seeking treatment at public hospitals, is a particularly reprehensible business. That is why we find the revelations made by Health Minister John Rahael in the House on Friday so depressing. It is outrageous, in fact, that arrangements were made to give exclusive rights to a private company to conduct tests  such as CAT scans at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. The Minister’s charges of corrupt practices in the health sector under the UNC are so disturbing that they seem to demand some kind of justice and, accordingly, the Government may want to include these matters in the terms of reference of Hector McClean’s inquiry, whenever that gets underway.

According to Rahael, the company, HTI Ltd, was allowed, by virtue of the contract it received without tender, to charge patients between $1,200 and $1,900 for a CAT scan at the PoS General Hospital. In addition to this exclusive right, the company was paid $500,000. “No other institution or authority, not even the NWRHA or the Ministry of Health can now put a CAT scan in PoS or within a three mile radius. Here it is that we are now making available to patients CAT scans at no cost at other public health institutions but at PoS General Hospital we cannot provide it,” the Minister declared. Rahael referred to another dubious contract, this one for providing oxygen to the Mt Hope Hospital. The UNC government, he said, changed the usual suppliers, Industrial Gas Ltd, which was paid $30,000 a year, and gave a new contract to a new company called Optimum Energy Technology which was paid $90,000, three times as much as IGL.

The Minister observed that Government had been trying hard to get out of this ten-year contract but according to their legal advisers it was “air tight and iron-clad.” What appeared to have transpired in the health sector under the UNC government were arrangements designed not to make treatment more accessible and affordable for members of the public but rather for the enrichment of private companies and private clinics. Rahael pointed out, for instance, that for the first time MRI equipment has been installed in the public health sector and that patients may now have MRI tests at Mount Hope at no cost to them. Previously, patients were referred to private clinics where they had to pay as much as $5,000 for these examinations. CAT and MRI scans have become valuable investigative medical tools, providing more sophisticated imaging of the human body than x-rays and enabling doctors to detect a range of abnormalities.

They should be a necessary part of the treatment available at public hospitals where poor patients should be able to obtain them either free or at minimal cost. It is good that at long last members of the public, particularly aging and indigent patients, have begun to benefit from positive improvements in the delivery of health care. These vital scans will now be available at no cost, treatment at Mount Hope will soon be free to all, elderly patients no longer have to wait for hours at hospitals to obtain their medication and primary health care is being extended to wider areas of the country. Most importantly, it seems the national service is now being reoriented and refocused to serve its central purpose, that is the health and welfare of the public and not for the enrichment of private persons and companies.