The Critical Care Block of Princess Margaret Hospital

Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) consultant and cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Duane Sands said the hundreds of patients on a chronic waiting list for surgeries at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) are being forced to wait because of serious infrastructural problems, along with work and space challenges.

Guardian Business understands there are over 500 outstanding surgical cases.

Sands revealed that some operating rooms at PMH have been without air conditioning, which he said is an acute problem. He pointed out that this would make some surgeries difficult to perform but emergency procedures still have to take place.

"When you get an unexpected acute challenge it makes a chronic problem that you have been holding together by the skin of your teeth, by the best you can do, now it throws that whole thing out of whack," he said.

"And even the best plans go awry, and so if you had scheduled to do six patients on an operative list -- but we are only allowed to do two. In that example, capacity is down by 66 percent," he added.

PMH Medical Chief of Staff Dr. James Johnson confirmed with Guardian Business yesterday that the A/C has been not been working for a week in operating rooms and laboratories on the $100 million critical care block at PMH.

Johnson said it would only be "natural" that some surgeries be delayed as a result of challenged working conditions.

Sands told Guardian Business that PMH faces capacity challenges as it relates to staff, equipment, and problems with the operating rooms.

Some chronic diseases that require surgery are heart disease, kidney diseases, gynecology, and orthopedic problems.

"There are some procedures that are simply not able to be tackled in the public sector because there is no capacity," said Sands.

Sands explained that the "complex multifactorial problem" includes serious infrastructural problems along with work and space challenges. He said that the Rand Memorial Hospital in Grand Bahama also faces similar challenges to PMH.

Sands warned, "We can't be dealing with this in a silo."

"I would expect that there are certainly many patients in hospital that have had their surgery delayed or cancelled. And, possibly hundreds of patients who form a part of a wait list for unmet needs. These are people who have been identified to have surgical problems that ought to be, need to be, and can be corrected.

"But, within the foreseeable or immediate future there is no capacity to get them done," said Sands.

Meanwhile, Sands questioned the government's priorities in terms of spending.

Earlier this month, PHA Managing Director Herbert Brown outlined how the government plans to spend $200 million over the next two years on infrastructural expansion and improvement of the country's hospitals beginning later this month.

"If we believe that Bahamians are entitled to timely and quality healthcare and our public health care system has huge challenges then one of the things we need to do in our acute care facilities is meet those challenges," said Sands.

Xian Smith, Guardian Business Reporter

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