Minister of Health & Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton has announced the expansion of the Ministry’s customer care response through the revision of the Compassionate Care programme.
“The revised programme will seek to increase customer care training and situate more customer care representatives in our primary waiting areas of our hospitals,” the Minister said, speaking earlier today during his Sectoral presentation in Parliament.
“The core mandate will be to oversee and tend to the wait experience, including monitoring the wait environment to ensure patient inquiries are responded to promptly and that the wait experience includes clean sanitary surroundings,” he added.
Nine health facilities will form the primary focus of this component of the programme this year: Percy Junor Hospital, Port Antonio Hospital, Annotto Bay Hospital, May Pen General Hospital, Bustamante Hospital for Children, Mandeville Regional Hospital, Catherine Hall Health Centre, Cambridge Health Centre, and the May Pen Type 4 Health Centre.
“We will also improve access by patients to the complaints management system, through the engagement of a business process outsourcing firm to manage, collate and refer the patient experience and to ensure that there is an effective system for tracking, recording and reporting the nature and complexity of complaints,” the Minister explained.
“To achieve the expansion of the customer care function in our health facilities, the Ministry of Finance & Public Service has provided the required positions to manage and operationalise the Compassionate Care Programme in the Regional Health Authorities,” he added.
As such, Dr. Tufton said, more than 20 new posts have been created and the Regions are now actively engaged in recruitment to ensure that the intended outcome of the intervention is realised.
“Patient-centred care is the pinnacle of an effective health system and we intend to transition our service delivery model so that we do not treat the disease but the whole person,” he said.
The Compassionate Care team is also to begin the process of training 90 per cent of all personnel within the island’s health facilities in effective customer service from a public health vantage point.
“This training is to remind our clinicians about appropriate bedside manner; remind our administrative staff about courtesies and effective customer engagement and establish systems for our security officers in effective communications and people management,” the Minister noted.
“We will also introduce unannounced and mystery audits of the wait experience with health centres and hospitals being assessed on the wait experience. We understand the need to wait for services in public health, as this happens all over the world. However, waiting can be more pleasant. It’s our mission to enhance the wait experience this year,” Dr. Tufton said further.