Patients getting good public health care

At the launch of the first TT Neurology Conference held at the Trinidad Hilton Conference Centre yesterday, Deyalsingh said in a population of 1.3 million people, 42 percent of the population is in the public out-patient clinics.

This amounts to approximately 45,937 patients per month. He said the satisfaction level far exceeds the level of dissatisfaction.

“In our out-patient clinics, 551,000 people pass through our public sector. Even if you have a hundred complaints a month, that is .21 percent,” Deyalsingh said.

“Even if you have 200 complaints a month that is .42 per cent. Therefore, the other 99 percent are receiving an acceptable level of care and this is what the data will show.” He continued, “Our Accident and Emergency Department for 2016 saw 370,248 people which is a phenomenal figure. But what is the dissatisfaction rate? Less than one percent. And all of this is being provided free of charge to the patient. We are taking a bad situation and making it better.” Deyalsingh said public health systems around the world are faced with high demands and this country is no different.

He said as Minister of Health, he concerned about the lack of data.

“We have no reliable data on strokes or on epilepsy and what I am doing is focusing on that. I just recently got Cabinet to approve 27 new positions in IT (information technology) just dedicated to data gathering. This bad situation we are confronted with is an opportunity to make it better. The public health system in TT, as elsewhere, suffers from poor brand recognition and poor brand equity.” Deyalsingh said his ministry has been formulating policies and a public health response to things such as stroke and other NCD’s (non-communicable diseases).

“Apart from that, we have been strengthening the NCD and cancer registries. The cancer registry is about 75 percent up and running for the first time. We are going to start the NCD registry very soon on stokes and gathering data on cardiovascular diseases so that with data we can formulate policy. Policies driven by evidence, driven by data.” He said the NCD programme is going to drive a shift in the way citizens think about public health care.

“For far too long we thought about health being the building of hospitals, but if you don’t tackle NCD’s you will have to build a new hospital in every community.” Also in attendance at the conference were program director Avidesh Panday, neurology specialist Dr Anil Ramlackansingh, consultant at the Oxford Centre for Enablement, England, Dr Nicola Paul and Dr Dave Ojar.