Shal­iza Has­sanali

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan says doc­tors must be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions at pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions.Khan said when a hos­pi­tal in T&T is sued for mal­prac­tice or neg­li­gence and the pa­tient wins the case in court, the State pays the bills.Khan said soon doc­tors would be re­spon­si­ble for their own med­ical in­dem­ni­ty.He said he would find a way to raise the doc­tors' salaries to the point where they can take out their own med­ical in­sur­ance.

"So if any­thing goes wrong based on tech­nique, they would be re­spon­si­ble. They would have to pay for it through their own med­ical in­dem­ni­ty. They would al­so have to look at their tech­nique and take more pre­cau­tions."Khan said it was one way to dis­ci­pline doc­tors in the health care sys­tem."We would make all doc­tors re­spon­si­ble for their med­ical in­dem­ni­ty. You see, when a prob­lem takes place, the peo­ple who get sued and the peo­ple who pay is the State... the State pays and takes all li­a­bil­i­ty."

Khan said when the State ac­cepts li­a­bil­i­ty, doc­tors be­come very lax and throw cau­tion to the wind.The ac­tion comes eight days af­ter a Cae­sare­an-sec­tion was done on Quel­ly Ann Cot­tle at the Mt Hope Women's Hos­pi­tal, which re­sult­ed in the death of her pre­ma­ture ba­by, who Cot­tle named Sime­on.Sime­on's head was sliced dur­ing the surgery, which cre­at­ed an out­rage. In the last three years, Khan said, his min­istry has be­come a punch­ing bag for lit­i­ga­tion by ag­griev­ed pa­tients.

"What I am al­so go­ing to do, which should have hap­pened a long time ago, is de­vel­op an au­dit sys­tem to au­dit peo­ple's (health care providers) work as well."Asked why a se­nior con­sul­tant was not present at the time of the Cae­sare­an-sec­tion, Khan said "this is part of the in­ves­tiga­tive process."

Khan: Team to in­ves­ti­gate ba­by's Sime­on's death

By to­mor­row or Tues­day, Khan said, a team would be se­lect­ed to in­ves­ti­gate what hap­pened."We are look­ing for peo­ple. We want a very tight team."Khan de­scribed the death of Sime­on "as a sad state of af­fairs. One has to find out ex­act­ly what went on. I am try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened in this case."Khan said Cot­tle had 12 preg­nan­cies."When some­one has gone through that lev­el of preg­nan­cies, the uterus is very thin. One has to en­quire and look at the op­er­a­tive tech­nique. Re­mem­ber this prob­lem oc­curred in an op­er­a­tion.

Every­thing else was okay. So we have to look at the rea­son why this op­er­a­tion went that way. Was the skin too thick...too thin? Was the uterus too thin? Did the guy put too much pres­sure on the blade? These are the tech­nique you would have to look at."Told that the doc­tor who per­formed the surgery had re­cent­ly ob­tained his spe­cial­ist cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Khan said it meant the doc­tor was pro­fi­cient to prac­tise at any lev­el."That per­son is sup­posed to be able to han­dle any sort of case."