Families cashing in on Sav hospital social patients

WESTERN BUREAU:

Camille Lewin, the chief executive officer at the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital in Westmoreland, says several of the social patients living on the hospital’s wards have relatives who visit them every month to cash in on their National Insurance Scheme (NIS) pension benefits.

This comes against the background that these same social patients are being cared for by the State and are creating a great inconvenience by occupying bed space which is needed by genuinely ill persons.

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic driving up the need for bed space, Lewin is desperately hoping that a solution will be found to relocate the 25 social patients at the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital.

Last week, St Andrade Sinclair, the regional director at the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA), told The Gleaner that he will be seeking to engage the mayors in the four western parishes – Trelawny, Hanover, Westmoreland, and St James – with the view of getting them to create space at their municipal infirmaries to accommodate the approximately 60 social patients in the region.

“We are tired, we would have gone above and beyond to get these people relocated without success,” said a clearly frustrated Lewin. “We have been trying to get them out of the hospital for some time now.”

To compound the unwanted presence of the social patients in Savanna-la-Mar, Lewin said that despite abandoning the social patients, some of their able-bodied relatives will visit them on special occasions and whenever they get funds via social benefits.

“Many of them do have relatives because we see them coming in. Some are even pensioners and the relatives come in to get the pension books to sign and sometimes they send up things from them,” said Lewin.

According to Lewin, the hospital has been consistently knocking at the doors of the Savanna-la-Mar Infirmary through the Westmorland Municipal Corporation, but they have not budged.

“Matron and myself went there three Thursdays ago where we tried to do a trade-off, asking them to take these patients from us, and we will give them beds, medical supplies just to take the patients from us,” said Lewin, who noted that they were not accommodated.

While acknowledging that the infirmary has challenges of its own, Lewin believes that if they take the social patients, it would ease some of the burden on the hospital..

“There was a dilapidated building over there (infirmary) and we said we would fix it, just give us the go-ahead and we will make the recommendation to our minister to have the facility rehabilitated so that they can take these patients,” said the somewhat desperate Lewin.