KPH gets CT machine
Published:Thursday | July 20, 2023 | 12:09 AMSashana Small/Staff Reporter
The Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) is to be outfitted with a new computerised tomography (CT) machine by September.
Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton made the announcement yesterday during a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House.
Noting that the lack of diagnostic equipment in hospitals has been a consistent area of concern, Tufton said the Government has been working to address this.
KPH has been without a functioning CT machine for over two years. Its magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been out of operation for five years. The situation has not only been distressing for some patients and their relatives, but reportedly, has made things “difficult” for staff at the island’s premier trauma hospital as well.
“There were complaints about the constant downtime of the CT scan there. We have repaired the old one but are now purchasing a new one,” he said, adding that the new machine costs US$2 million.
The MRI and CT machines are used to take pictures of internal organs, but the MRI provides a more detailed image.
Errol Greene, regional director of the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA), told The Gleaner that the old CT machine operated for about 17 years. According to him, the manufacturer’s recommendation was for it to do about 200,000 images, but it produced over a million.
“We’re very excited to get this machine, and this will take the pressure off the system, and the doctors and the nurses will be very excited,” he said.
He said the hospital is currently exploring options on how best to replace the MRI machine.
“It was recommended that we do not repair, so we are looking at our options - whether we should lease or purchase. We are in discussions with a firm from overseas who leases MRIs. That’s an option that we are looking at, at the moment,” he said.
Lease agreement
Tufton, in the meantime, said the Government is working to have “some very positive developments around placing under lease agreement the core infrastructural equipment in our main hospitals” by the next financial year.
This arrangement, he said, would address challenges with servicing diagnostic equipment.
“More often than not, even with extended service warranties, which we are now standardising in the system, when you have a down time for a machine, it requires someone flying over from overseas, sometimes as far as Europe. And so what could have been repaired in a day if someone was on site, takes a week,” he said.
“So essentially, (the lease arrangement will involve) sourcing an entity that can provide the equipment in our hospitals, provide servicing, allow for depreciating value over time so those (pieces of) equipment can be changed rather than trying to bring life beyond its useful life out of it,” he added.
He stated that the Inter-American Development Bank has been providing technical support for this initiative and that the Government has already received expressions of interest from a number of local and international agencies.
Currently, he said, the Government tries to fill the gap in diagnostic services through a public-private partnership where public healthcare patients can access diagnostic services at private entities.
He shared recently that close to $1 billion each year is spent on this partnership, and more than 120,000 people are treated.
But he noted the “justifiable concern” of patients having to leave the hospital grounds to access these services.
It is a concern that Wayne Chen, chairman of the Southern Regional Health Authority, also shares. He told The Gleaner that all hospitals in the region have been using this partnership to access these “modern diagnostic services” for patients and that while there is the benefit of having the choice of multiple entities, he says a drawback is hospital staff having to accompany patients offsite, which affects the hospital staff complement.
He noted that at the May Pen Hospital in Clarendon, the private-service provider is on site.