Health Minister, Dr. Christopher Tufton, was this afternoon briefed on mitigating efforts to relocate services from the main building of the Cornwall Regional Hospital, CRH. The briefing followed a tour of the newly retrofitted facility at West Jamaica Conference, WJC, which is adjacent to CRH. In total, 11 services have been relocated there.
Additionally, the following were discussed:
- Dental, Psychiatry and OB/GYN clinics should be relocated to WJC within a few days in order to house all outpatient services under one roof.
- The clinics currently serve 450-500 out-patients per day. At full strength, CRH serves about 700 clients per day. As the system becomes more organized, the hospital should get closer to capacity.
- Paving will being in the week of March 20 for 13 temporary retrofitted containers.
- 10 of those containers will house medical labs and the others will provide spaces for medical records and nurses’ station.
- The student housing facility at CRH is being retrofitted to accommodate inpatients who are now on wards on the hospital’s main building.
- Work is ongoing at Falmouth Hospital to restore the Operating Theatre with the likelihood of operations being possible within two weeks or earlier.
- The University of the West Indies, UWI, and the University of Technology, UTECH, have been asked to collaborate on a study of the challenges at CRH to determine how they can inform best practices and policies.
United Nationals Office for Project Services, UNOPS and the Pan-American Health Organisation, PAHO representatives are still on the ground assisting with the rehabilitation process. Six engineering firms have been given two weeks to submit a plan for the design of a new ventilation system for CRH.