For over a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od, the lat­est pe­ri­od com­menc­ing in late 2019, Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon, re­tired em­ploy­ee, of now sev­er­al years stand­ing, from the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (SFGH) has writ­ten a se­ries of ar­ti­cles that has an ef­fect to at­tempt to mis­in­form the read­er­ship on the gov­er­nance of health­care op­er­a­tions and the pro­fes­sion­al work eth­ic of hard-work­ing per­son­nel at the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA).

In sev­er­al in­stances, these ar­ti­cles are based on his unau­tho­rised re­ceipt and mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of in­for­ma­tion re­ceived. In this re­gard, the SWRHA con­tin­ues to in­ves­ti­gate and take the nec­es­sary re­me­di­al ac­tions to ad­dress clear­ly, the mis­guid­ed ac­tions of a few peo­ple, for mo­tives best known to them, to share same in an unau­tho­rised man­ner with Dr Cha­toor­goon.

There­fore the SWRHA again takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly clar­i­fy, but in the case of this last ar­ti­cle, clear­ly re­fute the mis­in­for­ma­tion penned by the doc­tor and pub­lished in the T&T Guardian news­pa­per on May 11.

With re­gard to his com­ment, which sug­gest lack of ac­cess to care in our hos­pi­tal out­pa­tient clin­ics, as well as fail­ure to no­tice same in the da­ta he ref­er­ences, Dr Cha­toor­goon is re­mind­ed to­geth­er with the read­er­ship, that the na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions pre­scribed un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance re­quired all fa­cil­i­ties to lim­it the num­ber of per­sons that can con­gre­gate in any pub­lic space. In the case of our out­pa­tient clin­ics, this trans­lat­ed be­fore the ad­vent of COVID-19 to sev­er­al hun­dred per­sons per day, in mul­ti­ple con­cur­rent clin­ics, in­volv­ing large num­bers of our es­sen­tial health­care work­ers, as well in pro­vid­ing care to our val­ued clients.

There­fore, notwith­stand­ing the re­quire­ment to com­ply with na­tion­al pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions, and pro­tect the safe­ty of pa­tients, vis­i­tors and staff, pa­tients at­tend­ing SWRHA clin­ics con­tin­ue suc­cess­ful­ly to re­ceive med­ical care. Ac­cord­ing­ly, a new sys­tem of as­sess­ment of clients was in­tro­duced pri­or to con­firm­ing clients’ ap­point­ments.

Sta­ble, well-main­tained pa­tients are giv­en re­peat pre­scrip­tions and new clin­ic ap­point­ments. The SWRHA has com­mu­ni­cat­ed and al­so ad­ver­tised in news­pa­per in­serts in the south­ern bu­reau, that rel­a­tives who are not im­mune-com­pro­mised, can come on the pa­tient’s be­half with the pa­tient’s clin­ic card and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, to al­so pick up their med­ica­tion.

The of­fi­cial in­ter­nal da­ta man­age­ment sys­tems re­viewed pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly by the rel­e­vant clin­i­cal ex­ec­u­tives, con­firm the ef­fec­tive­ness of the sys­tem.

It is to be not­ed the an­te­na­tal clin­ic is one of the no­table ex­cep­tions, where­by all pa­tients are al­lowed to at­tend clin­ic un­der the phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing guide­lines and there­fore the da­ta would re­flect no pri­or re­view of records or call by med­ical records de­part­ment.

The SWRHA al­so notes from the da­ta, that de­spite pa­tients be­ing in­formed that their med­ica­tion was avail­able for pick-up, there was some de­lay to come to the hos­pi­tal for same in a few clin­ics.

In ad­di­tion to this process, in March 2020, when the Min­istry of Health, at the reg­u­lar me­dia brief­ing an­nounced changes to hos­pi­tal op­er­a­tions, which in­clud­ed the in­stal­la­tion of a par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, the SWRHA CEO led, strate­gic plan­ning over­sight team, an­tic­i­pat­ed ser­vice changes and im­me­di­ate­ly in­creased re­sources and per­son­nel at our cus­tomer ser­vice cen­tre 87-SWRHA (877-9742).

Here, as ad­ver­tised, pa­tients were able to call to ob­tain guid­ance on any as­pects af­fect­ing their out­pa­tient clin­ic ap­point­ments. Feed­back from this source al­so re­vealed thus far, no high vol­ume or clus­ter of com­plaints, re­lat­ed to this method of con­tin­u­ing to serve clients in the hos­pi­tal out­pa­tient clin­ics.

Re­gard­ing elec­tive, non-life threat­en­ing surg­eries, it is un­for­tu­nate the view ex­pressed that the sur­geons and anaes­thetists are idle, and not work­ing, when in fact they con­tin­ue dur­ing this time to per­form emer­gency and ur­gent op­er­a­tions, that were still per­mit­ted to save lives of pa­tients dur­ing this try­ing time for the health sec­tor.

Fur­ther, the Min­istry of Health has al­so re­cent­ly an­nounced that elec­tive surg­eries that were in­di­cat­ed to be na­tion­al­ly sus­pend­ed at all Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties, are due to re­sume this week.

We there­fore utilise this fo­rum to urge all com­men­ta­tors, es­pe­cial­ly Dr Cha­toor­goon, for the in­ter­est of all the peo­ple of T&T to be re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens and to li­aise with au­tho­rised of­fi­cials of the SWRHA re­gard­ing any in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it ap­pears con­fi­den­tial in na­ture, and to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion once SWRHA is in a po­si­tion to, with­out com­pro­mis­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of pa­tients and con­fi­den­tial busi­ness op­er­a­tions. This is in or­der to pro­vide up to date, ac­cu­rate and cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion in their pub­lic dis­course.

The SWRHA is al­so con­fi­dent that in fu­ture, the re­tired em­ploy­ee will do the right and ho­n­ourable pro­ce­dure and not analyse unau­tho­rised, and pos­si­ble un­of­fi­cial or draft in­for­ma­tion com­ing in­to his pos­ses­sion, with­out first un­der­stand­ing the man­age­ment and lead­er­ship dy­nam­ics by which the SWRHA now op­er­ates, since his years of re­tire­ment from the ser­vice, that may not all re­flect in the da­ta, he is in unau­tho­rised pos­ses­sion of.

While the SWRHA con­tin­ues to pri­ori­tise the ser­vices de­liv­ered to our val­ued pa­tients, with care, com­pas­sion and com­pe­tence, we al­so un­der­stand the need for trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and where de­mand­ed, pub­lic scruti­ny to con­tin­u­al­ly im­prove our ser­vice.

There­fore we con­tin­ue to in­vite our pa­tients and clients to con­tact our cus­tomer ser­vice cen­tre at 87-SWRHA (877-9742), as a pri­ma­ry point of re­dress, for any mat­ter in re­la­tion to the ser­vice that we pro­vide.

The SWRHA, be­ing giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to state the facts as they are, now leave it to the read­er as to who now is re­quired to apol­o­gise to the coun­try in this re­gard.

Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion De­part­ment

South-West Re­gion­al

Health Au­thor­i­ty,

In­de­pen­dence Av­enue,

San Fer­nan­do