It may be that time has come for some qual­i­fied doc­tors await­ing pub­lic health sec­tor jobs to look out­side—in the pri­vate sec­tor or un­der­served ar­eas of T&T—un­til they get a pub­lic health sec­tor open­ing.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley has sug­gest­ed ex­am­in­ing the idea in a bid to en­sure that peo­ple trained and reg­is­tered as doc­tors do not sit in frus­tra­tion await­ing pub­lic health sec­tor jobs. He sug­gest­ed do­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly to have their skills utilised with­in their com­pe­tence and to have a more ef­fec­tive health care de­liv­ery sys­tem.

"...That's all I'm say­ing," Row­ley added.

He aired the view as he replied to Op­po­si­tion queries in Par­lia­ment on the hir­ing of more nurs­es and doc­tors for the pub­lic health sys­tem. Row­ley said such hir­ing in­volved the es­tab­lish­ment in the health care sys­tem and ap­pro­pri­a­tions by Par­lia­ment to pay peo­ple. Not­ing ex­pect­ed de­liv­ery of the Point Fortin, Ari­ma and Cou­va hos­pi­tals, he said there was a need for Par­lia­ment to ex­pand the pro­vi­sion for doc­tors and nurs­es and this will be ad­dressed by the ap­pro­pri­a­tions au­thor­i­ties go­ing for­ward.

On com­fort for oth­er doc­tors and nurs­es, Row­ley said, "Op­por­tu­ni­ties will con­tin­ue to be­come avail­able in the pub­lic health sys­tems and we'll fill and use those as the ap­pro­pri­a­tions al­low."

But he said there was al­so the pos­si­bil­i­ty es­pe­cial­ly for doc­tors who may want to look out­side of the pub­lic health sec­tor un­til they get an open­ing there if they so de­sire that.

"It's wrong to as­sume if you're not hold­ing a job in the pub­lic health sec­tor, there's no op­por­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice as a doc­tor," he said. Row­ley said he un­der­stood that once hold­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions and cer­ti­fied by the com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ty, doc­tors can prac­tice any­where.

On con­cerns about "un­leash­ing" peo­ple on the pub­lic, Row­ley stressed, "No­body is talk­ing of un­leash­ing any­thing."

He said he was speak­ing of peo­ple cer­ti­fied by com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ties prac­tis­ing with­in the lev­el of their com­pe­tence, but not prac­tis­ing as spe­cial­ists. "There are large ar­eas of T&T un­served which would be hap­py for a young grad­u­ate to come there and do even vol­un­teer work, es­pe­cial­ly when many grad­u­ates were sup­port­ed by tax­pay­ers."

He said sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nents of the pri­vate health care sec­tor were de­vel­oped and some could prac­tice there al­so. "One's ca­reer doesn't start at the top in every in­stance. All I'm say­ing is, the pub­lic health sec­tor is ab­sorb­ing as many as al­lo­ca­tions al­low—don't let us close the door from do­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent, es­pe­cial­ly from young peo­ple who want to serve the rest of the na­tion un­til their per­fect job ar­rives."

Row­ley stressed he did not want to be mis­un­der­stood, "As I know what the head­lines are go­ing to be—that I'm ask­ing doc­tors to work for free. I'm not say­ing that."

He said if dif­fer­ent things could be done to get a dif­fer­ent re­sult, then all req­ui­site changes should be con­sid­ered.

Row­ley al­so said con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to en­gag­ing an op­er­a­tor for phased op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Cou­va hos­pi­tal lat­er this year.

The Health Min­istry and UWI are spear­head­ing op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the PP gov­ern­ment-con­struct­ed fa­cil­i­ty. It's par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ted as an ex­porter of health care and is meant as a fee-earn­ing en­ti­ty though charges for cit­i­zens will be borne by the State.

Row­ley said the ini­tia­tive was tak­ing a "lit­tle longer than an­tic­i­pat­ed", but UWI is mov­ing as fast as they are able to.

"I wouldn't en­gage in guess­work at this stage but will rather wait un­til fi­nal arrange­ments are worked out by those charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. It's a nov­el ini­tia­tive be­ing done for the first time and par­tic­i­pants are be­ing care­ful work is be­ing done prop­er­ly and when it's made avail­able to the pub­lic as a po­si­tion to be ad­vanced, it's ac­cu­rate and work­able."